The Geneva Option by Adam LeBor

Published by Harper Paperbacks on May 28, 2013

Yael Azoulay, special envoy to crisis zones for the Secretary General of the United Nations, is in hot water after a memo she wrote, describing a sweetheart deal she negotiated with a genocidal African warlord, is leaked to the press. Because Yael is disgusted with a deal that provided a mass murderer with a suite in a five star hotel, and because she was the only person with access to the encrypted memo, she is assumed to be the source of the leak. At about the time the leak occurs, the Secretary General's aide is murdered. Yael discovers a conspiracy afoot within the UN's upper echelons and spends the rest of the novel trying to thwart it.

The Geneva Option's author, Adam LeBor, is a journalist whose nonfiction has focused on international banking and, at least in one case, on the UN. LeBor seems to have a working knowledge of the UN's internal politics. I don't know whether that knowledge, as presented here, is consistently accurate, but this is a work of fiction so that doesn't particularly matter to me. What does matter is the way in which LeBor incorporates that information into the text. LeBor's writing style is often dry. Descriptions of the UN and of world affairs read as if they were cribbed from encyclopedia entries or academic journals. It's difficult to maintain interest in a fact-filled narrative when the facts are presented in such lifeless language. It's equally difficult to form an attachment to a story that is told with such journalistic detachment.

Although there are times when LeBor seems to be using fiction to make a political statement, the far-fetched plot is at least moderately entertaining. The story, in fact, is the novel's main attraction, despite the drab way in which it is told. While character development is no worse than average for a thriller, it isn't easy to warm up to any of the characters. Other than Yael and a shadowy security guy named Joe-Don, nearly every character in The Geneva Option is either corrupt or, at best, ethically challenged, from UN officials to journalists. We're supposed to like Yael but her chilly, self-righteous nature is off-putting. She is troubled by a secret in her past that, when finally revealed, seems contrived. Perhaps we're supposed to like Sami Boustani, a New York Times reporter who is the novel's secondary focus, but LeBor gives the reader little reason to care about him. Joe-Don is too busy being enigmatic to generate sympathy. While I don't necessarily need to like the characters in order to like a book, it's always a benefit in a thriller to root for someone. No matter how often LeBor put Yael in a precarious situation, he didn't make me care what happened to her. That she turns into an improbable action hero at the novel's end did nothing to make her more memorable.

Dull characters and detached prose are serious flaws in a thriller that had the potential to stand out from the crowd.

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