Our Girl in Washington: A Kate Booth Novel

ncThe smart, saucy heroine of The Latest Bombshell returns in this chick lit version of Syriana, which has her crisscrossing the Atlantic for international business and intrigue. When business slows for Kate Boothe's Washington, D.C.-based political consultancy, she and her partner Jack Vanzetti take on the powerful Essex Group investment firm as a client, seduced by the astronomical private sector pay. Kate jets off to Paris for a briefing and in her downtime meets up with a friend, TV journalist John Jaures, who reveals he's very close to breaking an incriminating story about her new employer. Soon after Kate returns to D.C., Jaures's corpse is fished out of the Seine. Suspicious that his death is connected to the Essex Group, Kate picks up Jaures's investigation where he left off and plunges into a morass of high-level payoffs, arms deals and politicking over oil. Frequently hungover and always plucky, she takes on slimy corporate types, sends Jack off to party with a rogue oil baron and even meddles in a natural gas pipeline deal. The stakes never feel that high, though, in this entertaining if not all that suspenseful novel from a former CNN Headline News political anchor.