[N.B. there are
spoilers, but frankly this tripe deserves it]
Unfortunately, The Beauty of Bucharest is not a travel
guide or hymn of praise to the Romanian capital, rather it is a vapid thriller
that happens to be mostly set there. As
well as being simplistic in its plotting and entirely unoriginal, the novel
plays into lazy clichés and stereotypes of Romania as a dangerous place full of
corruption, organised crime, white slavery, cheeky grasping cabbies and
incompetent law enforcement.
Over in Denver,
Colorado, retired 50-something computer games developer Dan Porter has been
happily married to his gorgeous sexy younger wife Nicole for twenty years. To his intense astonishment one day he discovers
she is an international assassin, head of an organisation called the Clean Up
Crew (abbreviated by its members to CUC, possibly some kind of obscure sex-based
joke by the author).
This surprising
fact he learns when he opens the boot of their car in a supermarket car park to
find a dead body in it, after which his wife not only confesses her secret life
but enlists him in it. He discovers
Clean Up Crew is not actually a company cleaning up crime scenes after all,
though they do do that – mostly their own – instead they ‘clean up’ bad guys,
administering their own form of extreme justice to make the world a better
place. Now Dan knows what Nicole was
really doing on those business trips.
While he is still
reeling from shock, Nicole decides to take him on her next assignment, which
happens to be in Bucharest. The Beauty
of the title is Ana Albu, a young supermodel who has been kidnapped by Bogdan
Grigorescu, clearly the evilest man in the whole of Romania (and probably
several adjacent countries), with the glowering manner and disgusting cigars to
prove it. Naturally he is very wealthy
and occupies a large well-appointed palace in which he must rattle around.
Aided by sadistic
Rosa Klebb-style six-foot blue-haired security chief Ileana Gabor, his
organisation trafficks young women (after Grigorescu abuses them himself) to
whoever wants to buy. Ana will be his
biggest score yet, to be sold for a huge amount of lei to, it is heavily hinted, an Arab potentate. Nicole’s primary task is to kill Grigorescu,
but she and Dan happily add the rescue of Ana to the to-do list, then find
about twenty more desperate young women in need of their assistance. As this book is the first of a series, there
are no prizes for guessing how it works out.
As a supposedly
top agent, Nicole shows herself to be not quite the expert one might expect,
despite being portrayed as powerful and assertive, and with over twenty years’
experience. Apart from allowing her
husband to find the body in the boot, he saves her life more than once during
their expedition, and she would never have penetrated Grigorescu’s
well-defended palace without his skills learned from games development. Despite her being the boss, once he gets over
his shock at finding what Nicole does for a living, Dan shows he is pretty good
at it.
At the novel’s
heart is the relationship between the pair, and the implausible McMillan &
Wife dialogue sinks any vestiges of credibility left by the ridiculous plot. The sexual attraction between them too is laid
on thickly to the point of absurdity; Nicole is frequently distracted from the
life-and-death struggle by her high sex drive and her husband’s desirable bod,
especially when he is in spandex.
However, a dark side is hinted at by the lurid description of her
becoming horny seeing Dan blow Ileana’s brains out. There are mysteries only to be divulged in
the sequels.
It is hard to
believe such a mission would have been given to a single individual, which it
was before Dan was invited along, even with the help of a local fixer (who
promptly gets himself killed anyway). To
guarantee a successful outcome for something this difficult surely requires a
large team. Nicole and newbie Dan manage
to achieve the task with a degree of luck I doubt would occur in real life,
though the whole idea of a secret organisation devoted to murdering criminals
nobody else can touch is preposterous anyway.
Bucharest deserves better than this.
