{"id":4718,"date":"2013-11-15T12:05:16","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T12:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4718"},"modified":"2013-11-15T12:07:21","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T12:07:21","slug":"dixon-grace-1-9-7-hamburg-by-alexa-camouro-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4718","title":{"rendered":"Dixon Grace 1.9.7 Hamburg by Alexa Camouro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Rippple Books 1 October 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

364pp, paperback, \u00a311.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Shirley Whiteside<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Australian Alexa Camouro\u2019s debut novel is a beguiling spy thriller with a twist.\u00a0 It is the women who are proactive this story and that is a welcome change from male-dominated spy tales where women are often victims or decoration.\u00a0\u00a0 The first in a proposed trilogy, it features Dixon Grace, an Australian of Indian descent, who is teaching English and living with her German boyfriend, Ben, in Hamburg.\u00a0 Although mostly set in September 2011, each chapter takes place in a different place and time, ranging from Dixon\u2019s teen years up to her arrival in Germany.\u00a0 At first this is disorientating but slowly a complex picture forms although, tantalizingly, not all questions about this unusual heroine are answered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The novel hits the ground running with Dixon unceremoniously hauled into police custody (see the extract on this site).\u00a0 She is accused of industrial espionage, stealing secrets from aeronautics company, Flussair, where Ben works and she gives English lessons to its employees.\u00a0 Soon she is also being accused of murdering Ben\u2019s boss with whom she had been having an affair.\u00a0 Her protestations of innocence cut no ice with Schultze, the stolid investigator assigned to her case.\u00a0 He is soon joined by Babette Korner, another investigator, who seems more willing to give Dixon the benefit of the doubt.\u00a0 However Dixon, a former police officer back in Australia, is not willing to wait for the wheels of justice to turn.\u00a0 She escapes from custody and begins her own investigation into the murder and the theft of Flussair secrets.<\/p>\n

Dixonis a terrific character.\u00a0 A seemingly innocent Australian \u2018doing\u2019 Europe by teaching English to fund her extended holiday, she also has a police background and high level aikido skills.\u00a0 She is brave but not foolhardy and regularly meets with a mysterious Indian professor who is connected with Nyakall, an Indian conglomerate that is trying to entice ex-pats back to their homeland to work.\u00a0 Nyakall\u2019s boss, Devan Marawar, could be a megalomaniac intent on stealing industrial secrets from the West or he could be a generous philanthropist who wants to help poor Indians make better lives for themselves.\u00a0 The ambiguity of many of the characters is part of the novel\u2019s charm.\u00a0 No one is all good or all bad, no one is simply innocent or guilty, although it has to be said that the men do tend to come off worst in the basic intelligence and empathy stakes.\u00a0 Throw in a Russian prostitution ring being run through the language company that Dixon works for and you have all the elements for a cracking thriller full of twists and turns.<\/p>\n

The novel has a surprisingly intricate structure for a debut but Camouro is confident and always in charge of her material.\u00a0 She deliberately omits certain information so that the reader has to try and work out exactly who is who and what is what which makes for a particularly engaging and satisfying read.\u00a0 The next two books in the series have a lot to live up to in this excellent page-turner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Shirley Whiteside<\/p>\n

Dixon is a terrific character. A seemingly innocent Australian \u2018doing\u2019 Europe by teaching English to fund her extended holiday, she also has a police background and high level aikido skills. She is brave but not foolhardy and regularly meets with a mysterious Indian professor who is connected with Nyakall, an Indian conglomerate that is trying to entice ex-pats back to their homeland to work. Nyakall\u2019s boss, Devan Marawar, could be a megalomaniac intent on stealing industrial secrets from the West or he could be a generous philanthropist who wants to help poor Indians make better lives for themselves. The ambiguity of many of the characters is part of the novel\u2019s charm […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4718"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4728,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718\/revisions\/4728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}