Easy Money

Siler makes a triumphant debut with a thriller in which the heroine has an internal life as provocative and colorful as the raw, variegated American landscape she crosses. Walther-wielding and coke-recovered, Alison Kerry is daddy's little drug-courier, a tomboy with a capital T whose widowed father, Joe Kerry, raised her in the trade. Her father's suicide--the novel's first event--begins to untangle an intricate web of drugs and money laundering with origins in the killing fields of Vietnam, where Joe commanded a special forces unit. On a drug run from Seattle to Key West, a contact drops a computer disk into Allie's pocket and is murdered moments later. As Allie moves across the country--Missoula, Denver, Houston--she learns the disk bears secrets of heinous crimes committed just after My Lai, and that she's a woman wanted by the wrong side of the law. Siler's persuasive take on the underground world of deviant behavior, and her ability to channel that world through an introspective female protagonist, mesmerizes even as it thrills. Agent, Nat Sobel. Author tour. (Jan.)