Book Review: The Risk Agent by Ridley Pearson

The Risk Agent
by Ridley Pearson

The four volumes in the Risk Agent series by Ridley Pearson were the assigned reading for the March 2020 meeting of the Just Desserts mystery book discussion group here at the Lincoln City Libraries. As usual with any new series, I prefer to start at the beginning, so I read the first volume in the series, the eponymous The Risk Agent (2012).

The Risk Agent is set in Shanghai, and deals with corporate espionage, conspiracies, corruption, delicate international relations, and violence among Chinese mobsters. When a Chinese national, working for an American-owned construction company is abducted, along with an American intelligence asset who tried to help prevent the abduction, Rutherford Risk, an international security company, hires ex-military man and antiquities dealer John Knox to come in-country and attempt to either locate the two kidnapped men or facilitate a ransom payment to free them. He is teamed up with Grace Chu, a forensic accountant (with her own military training), who is also tasked with looking into the money trail of corruption and bribery payments that ultimately led to the kidnappings. Each of our central characters has a personal reason for wanting to recover the kidnapped men, adding extra urgency to their efforts.

Most of the book features non-stop action, as John and Grace learn to work together (awkwardly) or separately (not completely trusting each other). Everything they discover makes the situation more and more complex. They quickly figure out that multiple parties, with multiple motivations, are all after concealed information the kidnapped Chinese man had gathered, and most of them don’t care whether the kidnapping victims actually survive or not. Both John and Grace quickly find themselves on the run and not sure who they can trust. This is a very fast-paced political crime thriller, with a complex, multi-layered plot. Unfortunately, I found most of the characters to be rather one-dimensional and somewhat stereotyped — which kept me from fully investing myself in the plotline. The setting — with multiple locations in China — as one of the book’s strong points.

I enjoyed this one and find myself mildly recommending it for anyone interested in fast-paced international thrillers, though I doubt that I’ll read the remaining three volumes in the series, myself!

[ official The Risk Agent page on the official Ridley Pearson web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!