Betrayed-J.M. Windle

Betrayed
J.M. Windle
Tyndale, March 2008, $13.99, 365 pp.
ISBN 9781414314747

Vicki works for the Children at Risk Foundation; she is in Guatemala to see if a faith based organization is legitimate and their programs worthwhile. If they are she will approve a grant for them since they care of many of the capital city orphans with no place to go. Her sister Holly clashes with her as she is about to leave to go to the airport. Holy works at the Wildlife Rescue Center and she demands Vicki investigate why animals at the refuge are disappearing. She also has another problem she needs her sister’s advice on but Vicki has to go to a meeting and tells her she’ll talk to Holly that night.

Holly never gets in touch with her sister and the next time she sees her sibling she is in the capital city’s garbage dump and she is dying. When the investigation into her death is closed after a few unfruitful days, Vicki is livid and is determined to find out who killed her sister and why. Her inquiries lead her to a cartel consisting of men who were military fifty years ago and used by the CIA; they are now in positions of power that are unchecked and enable them to perform illegal activities without getting caught. Vicki needs proof that these men are corrupt but she gets in the middle of a CIA operation where she can end up like her sister.

BETRAYED is an exhilarating thriller that shows how people in power who are corrupt can make an entire nation fear and obey them in order to avoid death and torture. Vicki is stubborn and she won’t let anyone prevent her from finding out the truth. In a sense of irony the events of today are related to a massacre of a Mayan village two decades ago, in which Vicki was a witness to that event. J.M. Windle is a great thriller writer whose belief in God’s plan shines throughout the storyline.

Harriet Klausner