Awesome (San Francisco) Bay Area Thriller
“You do know the law. You just don’t know how it gets enforced.”
Yolanda Vance is an FBI agent who goes rogue in A Spy in the Struggle, a thriller set in the East Bay.
Yolanda had a rough childhood, moving from place to place with her mother after her father died when she was five. Her mother had abusive relationships that caused her and her daughter to flee in the middle of the night, and a few that crashed and burned because the man was cheating. Yolanda never felt she was first on her mother’s list of priorities and she eventually got a scholarship to boarding school. After a full scholarship to a small women-only college which is probably the fictionalized version of Mills, she went on to Harvard Law and was planning for a career in corporate law.
Her career path hit a rough patch when her firm was raided by the SEC and she refused to shred docs and she ended up working for the FBI. While she was hired as a lawyer, she ended up going undercover in Holloway, CA, pretending she was going to take the California Bar. She was tasked with investigating an environmental group in the town that the FBI said was a “Black extremist group.” Cue the record scratch. Most readers probably thought about some of the well known examples of the FBI trying to take out civil rights groups in the 1960s.
This was the only bit that was difficult to swallow—for at least half of the book, Yolanda was espousing some super conservative, self-hating beliefs about how racism was an excuse. It was some primo right-wing “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps or you deserve to starve” mumbo jumbo that didn’t make much sense with her other influence, a positivity guru. I accept that some Black people may have these beliefs but it was a bit of a stretch. I’m guessing the idea was why would anyone who truly believed in racism have gone to work for the FBI. But it’s quite clear that it’s a last resort for Yolanda who is on the verge of homelessness.
That all said, this book is about an FBI agent who learns the case she’s on is actually in service to a chilling corporate cover up. Yolanda is at a meeting of the group she’s infiltrating when an old woman stands up and talks about her granddaughter being killed and the police not investigating.
Despite some issues with the premise, I really enjoyed this book. I liked Yolanda’s journey to a new belief system and how she started to heal from a painful upbringing. And I particularly appreciated how Yolanda began to recognize that there is a difference between the letter of the law and how law enforcement interprets it. As a former wannabe lawyer, I’ve seen many fresh lawyers go from true believerism to jaded lawyers in a matter of months. Law students can be very idealistic and the law in action can quickly turn new lawyers into cynics. That felt incredibly true to life.
Yolanda Vance is an FBI agent who goes rogue in A Spy in the Struggle, a thriller set in the East Bay.
Yolanda had a rough childhood, moving from place to place with her mother after her father died when she was five. Her mother had abusive relationships that caused her and her daughter to flee in the middle of the night, and a few that crashed and burned because the man was cheating. Yolanda never felt she was first on her mother’s list of priorities and she eventually got a scholarship to boarding school. After a full scholarship to a small women-only college which is probably the fictionalized version of Mills, she went on to Harvard Law and was planning for a career in corporate law.
Her career path hit a rough patch when her firm was raided by the SEC and she refused to shred docs and she ended up working for the FBI. While she was hired as a lawyer, she ended up going undercover in Holloway, CA, pretending she was going to take the California Bar. She was tasked with investigating an environmental group in the town that the FBI said was a “Black extremist group.” Cue the record scratch. Most readers probably thought about some of the well known examples of the FBI trying to take out civil rights groups in the 1960s.
This was the only bit that was difficult to swallow—for at least half of the book, Yolanda was espousing some super conservative, self-hating beliefs about how racism was an excuse. It was some primo right-wing “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps or you deserve to starve” mumbo jumbo that didn’t make much sense with her other influence, a positivity guru. I accept that some Black people may have these beliefs but it was a bit of a stretch. I’m guessing the idea was why would anyone who truly believed in racism have gone to work for the FBI. But it’s quite clear that it’s a last resort for Yolanda who is on the verge of homelessness.
That all said, this book is about an FBI agent who learns the case she’s on is actually in service to a chilling corporate cover up. Yolanda is at a meeting of the group she’s infiltrating when an old woman stands up and talks about her granddaughter being killed and the police not investigating.
Despite some issues with the premise, I really enjoyed this book. I liked Yolanda’s journey to a new belief system and how she started to heal from a painful upbringing. And I particularly appreciated how Yolanda began to recognize that there is a difference between the letter of the law and how law enforcement interprets it. As a former wannabe lawyer, I’ve seen many fresh lawyers go from true believerism to jaded lawyers in a matter of months. Law students can be very idealistic and the law in action can quickly turn new lawyers into cynics. That felt incredibly true to life.