LIVIA LONE: BARRY EISLER

My first thriller from Eisler and because of the subject matter, child trafficking, it was hard to read. Livia is a victim of child trafficking, having been sold by her parents and brought, by container ship to the US to be sold.  Her container, however, is raided by police and she is the adopted by a wealthy business man, Frederick Lone, in Oregon.  He, however, happens to be a pedophile as is his brother, a Senator. Nice.  Livia puts up with his attention until her mid teens when she is able to thwart his advances, to his bad luck.

As the novel opens, she's a police detective in the child sexual abuse department, a judo expert and able to take care of herself.  She cannot put her past behind her and finds that vigilantism is often more effective then the justice system.  The chapters alternate between the present, her quest to find the sister she lost on the container ship,  and her past, from being sold by her parents in Thailand, to the abuse she faced on the container ship, to that of her guardian.  Her goal over the years has been singular: to find her sister..  It leads her to many dead ends, some dead bad guys, but eventually she finds answers in Bangkok.  She is not a nice cop but her story I found interesting (Eisler has not lots of research on trafficking), scary and compelling. There's a certain kind of pleasure in seeing bad guys get what they deserve even if it's not in a courtroom.