Blood Money tells the story of Azzam Abdullah, an Iraqi-born accountant living and working in London for Sun Corp. When Azzam’s employer finds out Azzam’s been informing on him to the CIA, he kidnaps a woman from Azzam’s past to ensure his surrender. A stranger in a foreign land, Azzam has to choose between the life of one woman and the safety of millions.
Blood Money was, for me, a very enjoyable, very well-crafted story that developed interesting and sympathetic characters effectively, offered "thriller" moments, and wrapped everything up cleanly without becoming trite. In fact, I was impressed by how well the author managed to balance the edge-of-the-seat moments with the moments of real humanity.
As I was reading Blood Money, something that jumped out at me was how nice it was to read a story from so many different perspectives: Azzam, the informer who is willing to put his safety on the line when he realizes that he can't sit by and watch his fellow human beings suffer in the name of ideology; Azzam's employer Omar, who is definitely a world-class scumbag but who also is a person with feelings and has to sort through the feelings of betrayal when he learns what Azzam has done; Shah, Omar's henchman, who finds himself unable to commit the crimes required of him when he looks into the woman's eyes and sees a person rather than a commodity. Mitchell never stoops to justifying criminal actions, but she does remind the reader that people who commit horrific crimes are still people. I suppose it's a case of "there but for the grace of God...," and in my opinion it's a good reminder. (After all, dehumanizing people is never the correct response to violent crime from those people.)
There are a number of characters in this book that might be described as "primary characters," but Mitchell develops each one well enough to remind the reader that he or she is a person and that he or she has a story to tell, even if that story isn't a good story. This is quite a balancing act in itself, and it continued to impress me throughout Blood Money. I have a fairly short attention span for multiple characters, but I found myself having no trouble following all of them and, perhaps more importantly, caring about what was going to happen to each of them. As a result, the story was a fairly quick read for me, largely because I just kept moving through it, wanting to know more about what was going to happen.
I noted above that the book wraps up cleanly, but it does so in a way that isn't too contrived. I found the final moments of the climax to be believable and satisfying. Justice is served, but not in such a way that demands blood-lust from the reader (despite the implications of the title). All in all, a great afternoon read.
Two thumbs up from me, for a fast-paced thriller that has a lot of heart to it.
