No Passengers, the debut thriller novella by Elainie La Force is set in Moscow, Russia. It is an imaginative, thrill-a-minute blend of suspense and action-adventure featuring an unforgettable heroine. But as a novella, weighing in at only 18,000 words, does No Passengers pack the punch crime action/thriller fans expect? Read my review.
No Passengers Publisher Synopsis
Twenty hours to disappear. One mistake could be fatal.
Anastasia Pestova is a quiet teller at the Bank of Moscow, in a city that doesn’t notice if she breathes. But when millions of rubles vanish through her terminal, she is suddenly the centre of a money laundering conspiracy.
With authorities watching the gates and her passport flagged at every checkpoint, she has less than twenty hours to do the impossible. Escape. One mistake, and it will be her last. And even if she succeeds, her ordeal is only beginning.
A wrongful accusation. A woman determined to survive. A cat-and-mouse chase with high stakes action.
My Review
After her first year of employment, newly minted junior bank teller Anastasia Pestova spends her weekdays taking deposits, transferring funds, and cashing checks at the bank and her weekends going to the movies or to the mall with her best friend, Sofia. Sometimes they sing karaoke at a local club with Sofia’s big brother and Anastasia’s boyfriend Luka. Her life isn’t glamorous or all that exciting, but she is earning her own money for the first time, feels like she is building a future with Luka, and her world suits her just fine. Until the bottom drops out. Anastasia gets railroaded, accused of laundering money through the bank for organized crime elements. It doesn’t matter that she is innocent. Used by her boss, she unwittingly helped him launder the money, but he denies involvement and the finger of guilt points directly at Anastasia.
With no way to prove her innocence and an unwillingness to go to prison for a crime she didn’t commit, Anastasia is forced to assume a new identity after she escapes from her home with little more than the clothes on her back, a fake identification card, and a hand full of rubles just as the police arrive. With the help of a cousin connected to the police, she flees to St. Petersburg to meet a family friend who agrees to try to smuggle her out of Russia by ship. With the police hot at her heels, she makes the arduous journey dodging one disastrous, highly dangerous situation after another. This well-crafted, character-driven thriller introduces an unforgettable heroine that readers can’t help rooting for. It’s a page-turner and a fast read that leaves the reader wanting more at the end.
While the crimes are different, No Passengers reminded me of the novel Dark Passage, another cat-and-mouse chase story involving an innocent man that was the basis of a popular 1946 film starring Humfrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Crime thriller readers who enjoy a fast-paced read with near non-stop, high stakes action and featuring a heroine you can’t help but root for will enjoy No Passengers. My criticisms are few. Some of the chase-escape passages, while gripping and entertaining, don’t feel completely realistic. Also, while similes, a literary figure of speech used to make descriptions more engaging and easier to understand by relating a subject to a familiar image, are a useful tool for authors, I found them a bit over-used in the writing. Still, I didn’t find either detracted from what was an enthralling, and original story that avoided the usual and repetitive crimes so often used for stories in this genre. It is a well-crafted, creative story, with vivid, well-developed characters. When the book ends, you can’t help but wish there was more and I hope to read more of this author’s work.
I purchased the Kindle version of the book used for this honest review.
My Rating: ★★★★