Review - The Barista's Guide to Espionage, Dave Sinclair

Think Bond girl who can make a mean espresso, is armed to teeth, trained to the bare minimum, and is mightily pissed off with her ex and you've got Eva Destruction. A woman with a propensity to fall for the bad boy, who thinks, for a brief time, that meeting billionaire charmer Harry Lancing might mean her streak of dead-end relationships has finally come to an end. Until he turns out to be a control-freak, super-villain with a plan to take over the world, and all sorts of ways and means of achieving it.

When the good guys arrive on the scene - mostly in the person of super-spy and double-entendre ninja Charles Bishop - Eva must work out if she still loves Lancing as much as he claims to love her; escape an airborne missile attack on a luxury penthouse apartment in London; and survive a range of weird attacks, approaches, assaults and general men behaving oddly incidents. All to end up with Lancing on his oddly laid out tropical island lair; with a security chief who would like nothing better than an excuse to be rid of her; trying to find out what exactly is behind his plan to control the world. For the right reasons, or so he claims.

If the title of THE BARISTA'S GUIDE TO ESPIONAGE didn't give you a big hint, then the blurb will sum up the general approach of this book in a nutshell. This is out there, funny, espionage fiction with a dry sense of humour and a particularly sarcastic bent. A cross between James Bond and Wonder Woman, with more than a hint of Bridget Jones. All of which unexpectedly combine to become a believable, funny, capable, in your face heroine; dealing with a super-villain who oozes charm and madness; and the hero (in his own mind) of the piece, Charles Bishop, who only occasionally needs rescuing by the super-resourceful, super-talented, loud mouthed Eva.

Looks like this might be the first novel in an ongoing series which frankly is excellent news. Eva Destruction can only get better with age, wisdom and a litre or ten more of dodgy wine with her mates.