The Mask (Vanessa Michael Munroe)

After a mission that leaves her battered, emotionally and physically, Munroe goes to Japan to spend some down-time with Bradford, her lover and head of the security firm she works for. When Bradford is jailed for murder she springs into action doing what she does best. If you don’t know the characters and the back story by now it’s too late. This is book six if you count the novella.

When I read the books I like to turn on Google-earth, on a 32 inch monitor, and “travel” along with the characters. If you have read the author’s amazing bio you will understand why her writing seems to put you right in the story. This book wasn't quite as rich in locales as the others but still very interesting to see the airport, cities etc. where the characters were located.

It seems to me when a great book spins off into a series it’s like doing a water-color painting. You start out with bright colors and as you keep adding water and adding water the colors gradually fade. This book didn't seem as interesting as the others in the series but maybe I’m just getting jaded. Of course it’s a must-read if you've read the other books.

I like these books, but only because I am willing to suspend disbelief that not only is Michael a super lethal assassin, who can take out MMA trained men twice her size (b) that she is drop dead gorgeous, but can transform herself into a man whenever needed, and (3) there is any man who would put up with her nonsense. Her boyfriend is another lethal assassin, but he is willing to endure her having sex with villains to further whatever project she is on as well as her disappearing for long periods because she is emotionally fragile. She ain't no bargain as a girlfriend. Having made those complaints, the plot is wexcellent. Taylor Stevens blends the Japanese culture with their business practices and their police procedures to set up nearly impossible hurdles for Michael. The way that she overcomes these problems is outstanding. Stevens keeps you guessing up until the bitter end. I took away a star for Michael being anybody's girlfriend. No one would put up with her past the first or second sexual encounter.

If you are a fan of suspense, thrillers and mysteries than you must be reading the Vanessa Michael Monroe novel. Oh you aren't, well then you must. The Mask is the 5th novel in this great series. Michael is a character that you root for and wonder how she's going to she going to piece together this latest puzzle plus get out alive.

Michael has gotten herself into some pretty interesting situations but this one is a bit more personal for her because it deals with Miles Bradford, the only person she trusts but is he worthy of her trust? She begins to wonder and the situation spirals out of control. If you love action packed novels then this series is for you. Ms. Monroe is a chameleon that works on adrenaline and using her street smarts.

I wasn't sure if Ms. Stevens was truly going to turn this series on its head or if she was cleverly pushing her readers and Ms. Monroe to trust her. Thank goodness we had already established that trust early on in the series.

I've loved every Vanessa Michael Munroe book I've read and this was just as good--maybe even better. Even though I have trouble imagining any woman who can look like a man, Michael is totally believable. I've read some reviews about the plot not being believable but I'm thinking it's pretty much as believable as the story I could tell about my life--and my life wasn't even a "interesting" as many I've heard. Besides, I don't expect novels to be believable. For me, the goal of a good novel is to take me away from where I am right now and if I learn something from it...bonus. Taylor does great research on the places about which she writes and I feel like I'm right there with Michael. If you haven't read all her books, you can start anywhere but I prefer reading them from the very beginning just to get the best character and story development.

She goes my Michael, alternates between a male blending in, and a she's-out-of-control assassin. When Vanessa Michael Munroe's friend and companion is framed for a murder at the biotech where he was consulting on security Vanessa jumps in to take over the investigation and root out the parties responsible. Lots of the novel points out the starkly different Japanese culture and mores. It's full of action, which builds, but the ending fizzles, partly because of the shuffled sequence at the beginning. To illustrate, the book starts on Day 7, jumping to day 63 when Bradford returns after months of incarceration, then goes to days 62, 44, 43, 26, 14, 11, 5, then 1-24. There isn't an inherent reason for the random chronology, and it doesn't serve the plot the way Memento pulls it off. The end leaves Vanessa running out of the country to be the predator out in the world. Oh well.

Series novels are probably my favorite kind of books to read because they can create a world full of drama and intrigue unlike stand alone novels ever could. The Mask by Taylor Stevens is book 6 and continues Vanessa's dramatic journey. This book follows her to Japan and the many obsticles she faces trying to solve the mess that her boyfriend Bradford is enduring. I cannot believe the many situations she faces with such great ease and excellence that I wish I were even half as capable. Sometimes stories with strong female leads inspire me to want to take charge of certain aspects of my life and fight for what I want and for what I think is right. Vanessa puts herself up against some of the seediest characters and these scenes are my favorite of this novel. I could not put this book down I want to devour the others in this series. I received a copy for this reveiw from Blogging for Books and all opinions are my own.

This was the first Vanessa Michael Munroe thriller I've read and is, I believe the fifth novel with her. It's a stand alone thriller so it's not vital that you read the previous ones.
Vanessa joins her boyfriend in Japan where he works as a security consultant for a Japanese company. He is arrested and accused of murder and Vanessa is out to figure out the truth and save her lover.
I enjoyed the pacing and writing style and it moved right along and pretty much kept you engrossed. There was just something about the Munroe character that didn't attract me to her. But that would be the only negative I have. While the start was a little slow it picked up fairly rapidly and maybe if I had read the previous novels I could have had a better liking of the protagonist. Overall an entertaining read.

This is book 5 in the Vanessa Michael Monroe series, but you don't feel like you're missing out on not having read the other 4. As this is my first book I was pleasantly surprised, the characters are well written. I love Vanessa who is described as tall for a woman so much so that she can pass herself off as her alter ego Michael. In this book her boyfriend Miles has been sent to Japan on business and she finds him in prison accused of murder. It's up to Vanessa to clear his name. A fast action packed read and I will be looking to get the first 4 books to catch up.

I received this from LibraryThing Early Reviewers for an honest review.

I've reviewed several of Taylor Stevens' Vanessa Michael Munroe novels ('The Catch', 'The Doll', 'The Innocent'). I am always excited by how Munroe addresses problems, thinks ten steps ahead, and creatively solves them. With an androgynous name (because she can pass equally as male or female), her storied and violent past seems to be exactly the right cauldron for the troubles that stalk her wherever she goes. Steven's latest, 'The Mask' (Crown 2015) is another winner. In this, Vanessa is trying to forget the person she's become--where her predator instincts turn her into an often unwilling hunter--by living with her boyfriend and doing what most of the world considers 'normal'. Once again, it doesn't work and she is quickly embroiled in a daunting mystery that threatens to destroy her boyfriend, kill her, and change the world so valued by the people Vanessa aspires to be.

As always, Stevens writing is intelligent. Here, she describes Munroe's uncanny ability to learn languages in two-three weeks:

"Soon enough she would find rhythm in the language, prosody to key the aural lock."

As much as this is a thriller, it is character-driven--and you've never met a character like Munroe. She is completely unique--freakish fighting prowess blended with rabid intelligence. Think Xena, the Warrior Princess married to Sherlock Holmes. Read these four snippets--you'll see what I mean:

"She took turns at random [as she walked through Osaka], stopping to compare the quantity and quality of vending machines...; discovered the dichotomy of quiet temples, shrines, and hokora tucked in amid busy city streets; stepped into every shop and restaurant that drew her interest, touching and tasking and breathing and learning, until the evening came and she followed the trail of bread crumbs through Osaka's crowded footprint home."

"Want built tight inside her chest, her skin tingling, itching for the pain to follow and for the violence that would scratch the itch."

"...hurt ceased to exist because all that mattered from one heartbeat to the next was whatever it took to stay alive."

"There was that wobble again, the gravitational pull of the thing she'd not yet placed."

By page 53, she'd grabbed me--again--and I had to finish. Read at your own risk, when you have plenty of free time.

This is the fifth in Stevens’s series of action thrillers featuring Vanessa Michael Munro, who though a woman usually passes as a male, using her middle name Michael. Although the beginning is muddy, events soon heat up and this may be the best of the series to date. That‘s saying something, because this is a good series: Michael is an intriguing character and Stevens knows how to blend action and detection. This episode takes place in Tokyo, where Michael’s boyfriend Bradford, ex-something or other and now co-head of an advanced security firm, has taken a job with a pharmaceutical firm that has been beaten out in the market too often not to suspect corporate espionage. They’ve not had success finding out who’s doing it on their own so they’ve brought in a new pair of eyes to take look.

For the first time, Michael is doing something she’s not used to doing. Her own past is filled with violence and risk: now she’s expected to do nothing, just enjoy being a girlfriend. Then Bradford is arrested for the murder of a Chinese woman who works in the plant. This is Japan, where arrest is tantamount to conviction most of the time and no one cares whether Bradford did the deed or not. It’s more important not to rock the boat and besides he’s a gaijin, a foreigner. Michael’s the only one who can find out what happened and if Bradford didn’t do it, find out who did and why and in the process secure her lover’s release. What follows is an intriguing mix of derring-do and sleuthing. The action scenes are fast and furious, the detective work slow and tedious, the piece by piece reconstruction of past events and people’s behavior and motives. Michael is faced by more than one bad guy and though she has knack for picking up strange languages –give her two weeks in a strange country and she speaks like a native—her gift can’t help her with Japan’s several thousand ideogram written language. Michael’s an intriguing heroine, the setting is exotic, the plotting solid and the action spectacular but believable. I’ll say it again, this may be the best in a generally good series.

Michael Munrow is in Japan recovering from a prior action. She is with Bradford who is contracted to root out a spy from a high tech biologic company..Bradford is framed for murder and jailed; Michael sets out to clear him. Complex schemes, honor and shame, consensus decisions, and violence dominate the story. As usual Michael is a brilliant investigator and relishes the violence.

Choppy storytelling and a jerky pace characterize this latest volume in the series of suspense novels featuring gender-bending action hero(ine) Vanessa Michael Munroe, able to shift from female to male and back again (convincingly) at almost a moment's notice. That, her incredible linguistic skills and her ace fight ability are at the heart of each of these novels; together, they make her an unbeatable foe for the succession of evil people she has come up against (most recently, Somali pirates and maritime industry conspirators of various kinds.

This time, the crime is very white collar in nature -- corporate secrets and espionage -- and it takes place in Japan, one of the world's most least anarchic societies (and thus a place one might least expect to find Munroe...) And that combination, in my view, hampered this novel to a considerable extent. Stevens clearly has done her due diligence about life inside a Japanese corporation, but placing a figure like Munroe in the midst of it and asking her to unravel a mystery associated with it was never going to be as dramatic or intense as, say, watching her navigate the backstreets of Mombasa and finesse the hawala system. This just isn't her world, and indeed, she only is there in the first place because Miles Bradford, her lover, has asked her to join him while he undertakes a job for a company, ferreting out a corporate spy. When Miles is framed for a murder on the company's premises, Munroe undertakes to clear him, and must unravel a tangled web of individuals and motives.

But the plot lurched from a dramatic confrontation -- Munroe confronts attackers in a garage! -- to a pedantic investigation, back and forth, and never really sustained a sense of suspense or anxiety. The "headlines" are all there -- we learn what the company in question does -- but as a reader I never felt a sense of urgency about the high stakes involved. It was simply the backdrop to Munroe's need to solve multiple puzzles, and race here and there, and brandish knives occasionally. Having lived in Japan, I can vouch for the fact that Taylor Stevens certainly gets the feel of a Japanese corporation right, but the whole setup on which the plot relies wasn't plausible, on a number of levels. Too much was too superficial, in contrast to what felt like much more vivid backgrounds of the stories in previous novels. Similarly, the sense of suspense that built up steadily to a significant climax -- a standard narrative arc -- that was a feature of those previous books -- wasn't as well handled here. In fact. there were times when I put the novel down for several days and felt no sense of urgency about picking it up to finish it. Overall, it felt more perfunctory, as if the author felt under pressure to come up with another, different exotic destination for Munroe, and settled on Osaka, Japan, a world in which outsiders are anathema. It might have worked, but only with more careful thought about how the various plot strands fit together, and more careful unfolding of the plot in such a way that it felt organic, instead of just a lurching between action sequences and rather ho-hum/pedestrian investigation scenes that felt like "show and tell" pieces. All of the taut pacing that has made the previous books in the series a pleasure to read evaporated, leaving only violent interludes in their place.

A real disappointment for me.

If you haven’t read Taylor Stevens’ books yet, do yourself a huge favor and buy one! She’s fantastic! Michael Munroe is ever intriguing, no matter which country she finds herself in. In Japan this time, Munroe must fight to protect her lover Miles Bradford from the machinations of a clever opponent. Trapped in a legal system that assumes guilt and with all the evidence pointing against him Munroe must cut herself off emotionally from the only man ever to understand her in order to save him. As usual, Stevens provides her readers with a deep immersion in another culture while at the same time showcasing Munroe’s deadly talents and ability to pry truth from a dark and chaotic environment. When combined with her language skills, Munroe’s observational talent and analytical ability sear through subterfuge like a blast of X-rays. Another remarkable adventure from a remarkable author!

Taylor Stevens grabs you on the first page with gripping action. You are immediately interested in the protagonist character, Vanessa Michael Munroe. She jumps out of the pages as a real life super hero with all of the cunning, stealth, physical prowess and emotional baggage of the super heroes of the past. The story starts out with action, then transitions to a waiting period for a few chapters, but then the action begins and doesn't stop until the last page. Just when you think the villain is predictable and the trap is set, Stevens twists and turns the story. If you don't enjoy violence, this story isn't for you, but if you enjoy spy novels and intrigue, you will definitely want to read this book. I'm looking forward to getting to know Munroe in her other books. Author's note says you do not have to read the Munroe books in order. She gives you enough details about her past to still understand the character.
FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

An interesting view of Japanese corporate culture through the eyes of author, Taylor Stevens. This was my first novel by this author, so I was not fully prepared for the savagery of our protagonist, Vanessa Michael Munroe. Vanessa spends most of the story as Michael, so easy it is for here to make the switch and bewilder her enemies. Her lover, Miles, has been hired by a corporation to find out who is stealing and selling the companies' secrets - and his sojourn to Japan for this purpose gives Miles and Vanessa an opportunity to get their romance back on track after a hiatus. The romantic angle doesn't last long - as Miles is accused of murdering a corporation employee, and is immediately incarcerated. Vanessa becomes Michael and embarks on Miles' mission - to find out who the thief and now the true murderer is.

Michael, riding her motorcycle, Ninja, proves to be an unbelievable escape-artist as she cuts a wide swath through all possible suspects, helps to free a kidnapped girl from a mafia-owned hostess club, shames the corporate thief whiile preventing his face-saving suicide, kills the mafia chief, and frees Miles. This is one talented lady.

The Mask is a good tale, with the added interest of finding out how they handle things like theft, murder, etc. in Japan. Not an "edge of my chair page turner"; however, this novel moves right along to a very satisfying end. Working up to the conclusion, there's some pretty fast-moving action, some creative twists and turns and enough "shootem up" to leave me in need of a good rest!

A worthy read for those who love action - Stevens' descriptions will put you right in the middle of it.

The Mask takes Monroe to Japan to save Bradford from murder charges in a legal system completely foreign to us. This smart story shares insights about Japanese culture as Vanessa investigates a biotech company for its secrets and answers to free Bradford. Twists and complexity surround this adventure! Couldn't put it down.

I had difficulty with the hopping and skipping timewise in the first several chapters, but once the author settles down and starts telling the story chronologically, it becomes a first rate thriller. Vanessa is a fully developed character and one who's fun to be with. The lesser characters don't fare quite as well, but this is still four star reading.

Michael Monroe is an enigma. I think that makes the character attractive to imagine. The character has skills in finding truth and rectifying any physical issues along the way. I wouldn't say heroic so much as effective and efficient.

Besides the character being intriguing, the book has a nice pace that speeds up as you go and keeping you reading because you just have to know what happens next. This makes for a wonderful mystery/suspense novel.

This one is set in Japan which has a appeal all it's own. We get a little exposure to culture differences.

I am a big fan of Jack Reacher novels too. This one is very different but equally engaging. I recommend it.

This is no ready made thriller template book! One has to pay attention to follow all the twists and turns and connections between the characters. The author does not bore readers with too much history about the main character Michael, but gives enough for interest to pique and want more of this character.
Technically proficient in describing fight scenes, the author also added a worthy adversary, one who is similar but not quite as good as Michael.
Japanese culture is actually another of the characters of this novel and Taylor Stevens developed this as another layer to the mysteries.

Absolutely one of the best thriller series I've ever read. I could not put this book down. I was drawn into the story right from the beginning, and stayed there, riding the turn and twists along with the characters.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the Author.
I read Mask in a flash: usual intellectual puzzles, not obvious resolution, consistency of the main characters, decent description of Japan and Japanese life: business and after hours.
If you are new to Vanessa Michael Munroe and read this book and still have questions, you should absolutely start from the very beginning and proceed forward as the characters' essence is intertwined with the stories, events, and the land where those events happen. Another interesting feature of Ms. Stevens characters is that they change from book to book based on the events being described, so you never get tired of them: they always fresh and ready for action.

The Japanese venture is totally ridiculous and shallow. I've read all of the novels of this Vanessa Michael's series, and I have to say that except the first one, all the others felt like driving a car going down the hill and the downhill grade is pretty steep. But this one is the worst, so bad that I decide not to include Taylor Stevens in my MUST-READ author list. I don't know what went wrong with this writer. The plot is ridiculous and absolutely unconvincing, the writing is bad and pretentious. The only thing I noticed in this novel that has been improved is that the paragraphs are shorter, not like her earlier novels, so it's much much easier to read. Other than that, there's nothing good in this disorientating one dimensional contrite novel.

The mask a cookie-cutter thriller with stock characters, lightly sketched settings and a plot with gaping holes. I found it to be drawn from a tired formula that has been better by other writers. The one positive is that the protagonist is a woman, but she's the only character that I found to have any depth. Some people will love this book, but alas, I'm not one of them.