Take the Bai Road by Erika Mitchell - #review

After the events of Bai Tide, CIA case officer Bai Hsu is safely tucked away at Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Bored and frustrated, he’s starting to doubt he’ll ever return to the field until he’s given a difficult new assignment: Track and investigate the mysterious Ghost Cartel, who may or may not already have hooks in our government.


With secrecy of the utmost importance, Bai accepts the mission even though he knows he’ll be out in the cold. With no official cover, no backup, and no resources, Bai has no choice but to infiltrate a shadowy organization few know anything about.

Tangled in a conspiracy that will pit him against warring cartels in Mexico, this is Bai’s most impossible mission to date. It will test him, make him question himself and the organization he works for, and ultimately rip away everything that’s ever mattered to him.

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MY REVIEW

Poor Bai Hsu.  He's out of the frying pan of Bai Tide, first book in the series, and straight into the fire in the new Take the Bai Road.  As if capture in North Korea, prison and torture weren't enough, right?  Since he returned to duty after that episode, he has been pushing papers around Langley, and is itching to get back into the thick of things.  Have you ever heard the saying, "Be careful what you wish for?"

He is given the opportunity to track the Ghost Cartel in Mexico, which is rumored to have someone on the inside of the CIA.  He jumps at the chance.  Bai joins the crew of a ship from China on its way to Mexico, when it stops in Hawaii.  During the week on board, he finds a crate loaded with ephedrine (an ingredient in meth), hiding a computer hard drive with Chinese symbols on it.  Well, that and killing the man responsible for the crate.

Bai seems full of angst at killing in Road that I don't remember from Tide.  It seems out of place, perhaps, but really - do you want people who kill without compunction or thought for collateral damage?

The mission takes a southerly turn almost immediately, making for a exceptionally exciting ride.  Bai travels with the crate to Washington state, to the house of a US Senator, and from there to a power company building.  In the process of chalking up four more bad guys (well, one of them took a cyanide pill), Bai learns they know who he is and what he did in North Korea.  Let's see:  US Senator, power supply, bad guys with revenge on the mind....NOT a good combination!

There is a surprising amount of humor in the book as well, with most of it coming from Bai's snarky comments to himself.  But you need something to break up the tension and the danger.  Otherwise, you could implode from the stress or 'go to the dark side', neither of which are pleasant options.

If I were a woman in Bai's life, especially if I knew what he really did for a living, every time I saw him I wouldn't know whether to hug him, or slap him upside the head and shout, "Snap out of it!"

Take the Bai Road is an exhilarating read.  You don't have to read Bai Tide first to 'get it', but I'd make sure to read both at some point!  And I digging the punny titles, even made up a little song ... "I'll take the Bai road, and you take the slow road, and I'll be in deep $&*# before ya!"

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MEET THE AUTHOR

Erika Mitchell is the author of Blood Money, a standalone novel about one accountant’s efforts to take down a terrorism financier, and Bai Tide, the first book in her Bai Hsu series. Erika uses her lifelong passion for espionage to infuse her stories with the fun and intrigue of the James Bond movies she grew up watching, and sets those stories in ripped-from-the-headlines locations around the globe. When she’s not writing, she’s raising two tiny spies-in-training with her husband in Seattle, WA.

Find out more about Erika at her website, and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter. You can also read her blog at parsingnonsense.com.

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(Disclosure:  I received a copy of this book from the author and publishers via TLC Book Tours in exchange for my honest review.)