The Washington Stratagem – The UN has never been so interesting.

Yael Azoulay works at the United Nations and is based in New York and is a covert UN negotiator reporting directly to the UN Secretary General Fareed Hussain. Other than the Secretary General and a few trusted aids the UN press corps know who she is but not exactly what she does.

She is sent to Washington DC to meet the head of The Prometheus Group which is a secretive organisation that publicly is an asset management & security company led by brash Clarence Clairborne, who has his own interesting back story. The Prometheus Group’s reach is far and deep in the intelligence and military communities and only those who need to know actually know what it does.

Yael Azoulay is sent to meet with Clarence Clairborne with a file of information that would be of interest to many groups outside of the UN. What Yael does not realise is that she is crossing a man who will go to any lengths required to keep the information buried and her with it if necessary.

The UN General Secretary is put on sick leave ahead of a major peace conference in Istanbul that he and Yael have been working very hard on, but an internal coup takes place sidelining them both. The Acting Secretary General Caroline Masters is an American who wants to see a greater role for private companies in the UN Security and she allows The Prometheus Group and its allies to take a greater role in the Istanbul Conference.

Yael has to get to Istanbul she is sure that the conference will be a target for terrorism, but her diplomatic immunity has been revoked and she is wanted in a number of countries to aid investigations in to suspicious deaths. Yael has to fight for her life as everyone is looking to get to her, some to kill her others to use her but can she evade them and save the conference.

The Washington Stratagem by Adam Lebor is a well written well research book that takes us from the glitz and glamour of the UN in New York to Istanbul where survival is the key. Lebor has a wonderful writing style that draws you in and has an eye for details that others would forget or simply not know. With this his descriptions of where the ‘set pieces’ take place are believable and vivid as if the reader is in the midst of what is happening.

Yael Azoulay is a wonderful protagonist in that she is unpredictable, but talented, beautiful but not a model, skilled and very dangerous. There is an air of mystery around Yael which is often highlighted in the book by the UN Press Corps in that they know her but they still do not actually know anything about her or what she does. There are hidden depths in Yael with a skill set that many international agencies would like but not likely to get.

This is an intelligent thriller that makes the UN look glamorous and exciting for a change and I want to see more of Yael Azoulay. ( )

I was hooked on the first page of The Washington Stratagem by Adam Lebor, as it opens with strong female protagonist Yael Azoulay, an Israeli-American working as an undercover investigator for the United Nations. Much of the story is set in New York City, at the UN headquarters and the streets nearby. She learns more than she wants to when, at the request of Secretary General Fareed Hussein, she meets with the CEO of the Prometheus Group, a multi-billion dollar lobbying and asset management corporation that profits from war, especially in the Middle East. She leaves the meeting with CEO Clarence Clairborne conscious of the threats that hung in the air, against her and the people she works for.
Returning to New York, she find that SG Hussein is on sick leave, although there is no evidence of him actually being ill. It has all the appearances of a power play by the assistant SG, Caroline Masters, who becomes acting Secretary General.
The Washington Stratagem is a cynical look inside the UN, which is portrayed as a haven for idealists, career diplomats and politicians, along with various bad people with their own agendas. As the story touches on troubling events, past and present, in hot spots around the world, the enemies of Yael Azoulay multiply, especially after she is demoted to a job with a high-sounding title but little real importance. The international net closes in on her as friends become enemies.
Sequel to The Geneva Option, The Washington Stratagem is a complex suspense novel that exposes a realistic, if somewhat cynical view of international relations today. Yael Azoulay is a feisty, intrepid protagonist whom the reader cheers for every step of the way. I look forward to her adventures in the next of this series. (As published in Suspense Magazine) ( )