Runner: A Jane Whitefield Novel [Paperback]

I've read just about everything by Thomas Perry, and the Jane Whitefield books are my favorites. The brilliant Native American woman who takes people "out of the world" is back with an exciting new case. It's been a few years, and Jane must adjust to new realities (post-9/11 security systems, new Internet tracking capabilities, etc.) to help an abused, pregnant woman disappear from the ruthless people who are looking for her.

Perry knows Jane Whitefield inside and out, and everything she does in these adventures just rings true. Every new book is like a visit with an old friend, which is how I think of her. She uses her common sense while avoiding the thousands of mistakes most of us would make (phones, email, GPS, Internet, etc.) in making other people vanish without a trace. Of course, the modern world makes vanishing increasingly difficult, and Jane has to strive to keep ahead of all the latest technology that is her profession's enemy. This makes her a bit of an old-fashioned throwback--but it also enables her to get the job done. RUNNER is a fascinating addition to this wonderful series. Recommended.

I am a big fan of Jane Whitefield, and the worst Jane Whitefield book (which I think this is) is still a whole lot better than an awful lot of mystery/suspense books out there.

That said, this one isn't carried through with Perry's usual precision. Without giving away the ending, I'd just like to say that he uses a change of point of view at the end to avoid detailing a rescue that he apparently had lost interest in, or invention for. One of the things I like about this series is that Jane usually uses her ingenuity to avoid bloodshed, but this time she kills 6 people with no apparent repercussions, even though there are people who know of her existence, if not her name. And yet the police are willing to leave that last element unprotected for the rescue I mention above....

Also, the admittedly poignant infertility plot seems weird to me--Carey's a doctor, for god's sake, and the two of them have more money than I can even imagine (I liked when she put the $40,000 charge on her card--billable to another identity, no less)so why not try an IVF cycle, people? I don't think Perry did his research on this one, and he seems to have rushed through the ending. It's still a good read, just not as perfectly plotted as the rest of this series.

I came late to the Jane Whitefield series, reading them all last spring, then waiting with bated breath for this newest installment. If I had started with RUNNER, I'm sure I would have liked it better, but it does seem pale in comparison with the earlier novels.

Jane Whitefield has a calling: she guides people out of the world. If your rich and abusive husband is going to kill you if you leave him, Jane will help you vanish. If the Mafia is on your trail and the Witness Protection Program isn't enough, Jane will give you a new life. Through a combination of physical courage that borders on derring-do and hyper-vigilance, Jane guides the runner through the stages of a vanishing act: new identity and location for transition, another set of realities for the long haul. To make this possible, Jane consults the stars of the underground identity culture - forgers, photographers, bent math whizzes --and she grows identities of her own through a variety of clever strategies.

The well-worn birth-certificate-of-a-dead-kid ploy is way too elementary for Jane Whitefield. If you like heist stories, the prep work she puts into identity-growing will fascinate you. And the real pay-off is this: she does it for good, not for money. Jane doesn't charge her runners. If they have money, she will use it to help them. If they later access money, they often send her a thank-you check. But it's all for the calling, nothing for personal gain. She says she does the work because 1) she is able to do it and 2) it needs to be done.

This very moral stance is somewhat under-cut by the increasing physical violence of the series. Jane racks up a high body count. The implicit rationale for this is that Seneca warriors protect their families. But Jane never says "no" to a runner, so this very elastic definition of family seems a bit facile. But most ethical male heroes slay their tens of thousands - Spenser comes immediately to mind - so I'm not losing sleep over Jane's corpses. They are all bad people doing things they shouldn't be doing. And - unlike many male heroes - Jane never overlooks her failures. We hear again and again about the mistakes she has made and the lives she has lost and this keeps things real. Perry realizes that the possibility of failure raises the level of tension 1000 per cent.

Perry's ability to write a convincing woman hero is very impressive. He ignores all the little things that trip men up - everyday grooming unrelated to disguises, for example - and pays shrewd attention to the way the world assesses women. (Nor is this a one-off feat. Read Nightlife for two amazing women, serial killer and detective.)

And the Seneca material is pure gold.

My favorite thing to find in mystery novels is a new world - art, national parks, Wall Street, computer security, archeology, obscure corners of the academy. Perry gives his readers fabulous chunks of Seneca history and culture, from big-picture contexts to the details of fingernail clippings. The Seneca traditions and culture add a huge dimension to the series and much of the raison d'être for Jane's actions. We meet other Seneca women and men, visit reservations, learn about tribal traditions which make Jane's choices not only believable, but virtually inevitable. And the author's sense of setting is phenomenal. In the first novel, I tracked Jane through the Adirondacks on Google Earth using Perry's vivid (and accurate) descriptions of place. This is an A+ series on almost every level. I just wish there were more novels.

That said, Runner was a disappointment. The post-9/11 security requirements pose a huge problem for Perry, who has Jane jumping on and off planes as if they were London busses in the earlier books. Obviously that has to cease, but it's puzzling that Perry didn't give the Homeland Security topic more play, instead making Jane shy away from airports because so many people are looking for her.

While there's a glam about 10 planes in one day, the book need not have suffered if Perry had given us something else. But we don't get details about Jane's drives, not after the first run with Christine. Similarly, the minutiae of setting up a new life for someone is always fascinating, but here it's merely summarized, not detailed for the reader's enjoyment. The sense of place I loved so much in the first five books has been misplaced here. The Seneca material is only very lightly sketched, as is the character of the runner, and the motivation of the bad guys is barely credible.

Every author has an off day, and this is still a good read. If you are new to the series, comfort yourself that going back to the first five books will be even better.

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