This book was okay. It was my first Ian Hamilton / Ava Lee novel and I wasn't all that impressed. My initial thoughts were that it was reasonably poor, a 2-star book at best. I didn't really care for any of the characters, but things improved a bit with the addition of the North Americans. Maybe the Asian characters were closed off as they were supposed to be. Ava Lee, meh, despite her innumerable accomplishments and theoretically admirable skills she felt flat to me, nothing I read ever built out her character in any real way. The dialogue throughout was the same, just a lot of back and forth nothing; most everything a half-finished question.

The ending was pretty good though, and it helped an otherwise lackluster story. There were a few bright spots towards the end so I bumped this up to okay, middle of the road good. ( )

A new direction in the Ava Lee series. With her love life now settled with a famous Chinese actress, Ava moves away from her old debt collection business with Uncle and her new business ventures with May to answering a request from a prior client, Chang Wang and Tommy Ordonnez. They ask her to speak to a business partner of theirs, a Philippine senator, about concerns raised by the Muslim Brotherhood about a secret camp in Tawi-Tawi. Harking back to the days with Uncle, Ava decides having a favor from her former, connected clients can't hurt. As she investigates, she eventually brings in a CIA partner seeking redemption. When Ava figures out the culprits, major pressured is applied to make her remain quiet, risking not only truth, but trusts she cannot ignore. ( )

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a couple of cautions. First, I received a free copy of the book via Netgalley. Second, I am a huge fan of the Ava Lee series and have read all of the books. I think they are terrific.

In this book, Ava undertakes an investigation for a previous client of her defunct debt recovery business. This takes her to Mindanao in the southern Philippines to look into a suspicious school. The fear is that it is training Islamic terrorists. Ava applies her usual forensic accountant investigation methods, e.g. follow the money. There's a lot of the usual frenetic travel around Asia (Ava seems to have conquered jet lag) and for a change of pace she goes to Australia to interview a former student of the college. All this activity is in aid of a shocking and surprising conclusion.

I saw a different Ava in this book, which shares similarities with the James Bond novels. She is on her own much more than before, her usual sidekicks are nowhere to be seen. Even her Toronto banker is barred from helping her. This means she needs to enlist new support, e.g. the RCMP officer she met in a previous book and a CIA agent. There's a mention in the author's Acknowledgement that this book went through several iterations: is the final product an unhappy compromise between an attempt to refresh Ava"s character and one to branch out to geopolitical intrigue? I am fussed that Ava (and the series) might become another run-of-the mill "thriller" series.

Despite my concerns, this is a good story, although not one of the best books in the series. ( )

Ian Hamilton hasn't lost his knack for writing a compulsive suspense thriller. I whipped through this latest Ava Lee investigation in only a few days. The art is built around the relatively short chapters that end with questions which compel you to read 'just one more chapter' and before you know it the book is finished.

Although this isn't a return to the debt collection days with Uncle (which I think to many are the reason they became Ava fans in the first place) "The Imam of Tawi-Tawi" does reacquaint us with characters from those days who we met in "The Disciple of Las Vegas" (Ava Lee #2) & "The Scottish Banker of Surabaya" (Ava Lee #5).

This time Ava is called in as a "favour" to investigate the possible nefarious goings-on at a religious school in a remote southern island of the Philippines. The solution comes with some twists and turns and is not at all predictable. We get a hint of the big bad from the use of a single word during an interview with Ava, so see if you can spot that.

Although the reading was compelling I was left a bit down and unsatisfied in the end. Perhaps because there was no satisfactory final confrontation? Hard to say more without being a spoiler. Maybe I long for Uncle and the debt collection days and this seemed to promise something more along those lines but it didn't follow through in the end. And Ava's martial arts skill of bak mei was called upon for only a page or so? We want more than that! ( )