Think you want to go on one of those trips up the Amazon river into the rain forest. This book may make you think twice!

Elizabeth Crossman is an almost-40 underemployed Ph.D. who happens to speak Portuguese. When she is asked by two young software developers to accompany them as a translater on a trip to Brazil to sell their Hypotheses program, she jumps at the chance. Wallace and Bates have developed a program which helps people make difficult ethical choices. After the trade show is over, the team, which includes an American publicity man and an English lawyer, goes on a trip up the Rio Negre. Their trip starts in Manaus where the men spend the evening in a brothel. Bates tells his girl that they have developed a perfect bomb because he is tired of talking about the software program. On the river one night their boat is boarded by Spanish speaking bandits. The boat's crew is killed and the Hypotheses team is taken into the jungle. They are kept in a hole in the ground and taken out in turns to be tortured. The bandits want the plans for the bomb. Wallace manages to disarm and kill one of the bandits and free the others. But that is not the end of their problems.

The writing is so detailed that you feel like you are experiencing everything with Crossman. Some (many) of the details are horrifying so this is not an easy book to read. At the same time, I found it hard to put down. Although this book is not for the faint of heart I would recommend it highly. ( )

Uninteresting characters, and that spoils any book for me. ( )

I always enjoy Pyper's thrillers which he carefully constructs, building suspense and planting questions and discomfort as the plot progresses. This story happens in the heart of the Amazonian jungle. A series of careless secrets, happenstances and unlucky decisions bring five Western characters in an inextricable situation. The story is most interesting for its tone: sometimes told from an omniscient point of view, sometimes from that of the translator and other times addressing the reader directly. This mixes the truths, and the reader cannot quite rely on what he reads. Who are the bad guys, the traitors? Who causes what? This clever ploy keeps the plot moving despite the sometimes long lulls in action and scenery.
The main characters, Bates and Wallace, are compelling, although their relationship could have been more explicitly developed. The others are good foils, each with their secrets and interests.
This novel is not as unnerving as Lost Girls, but it does make for a good thriller. ( )

Elizabeth Crossman has a doctorate, but hasn't been able to find a teaching job, even at a second or third tier university. She finds herself living in a basement apartment in Toronto getting by on translating jobs; she speaks Portuguese. In The Trade Mission she is hired by a software company to accompany them to Brazil as part of a trade delegation from Canada. After the show, she goes with the four founders of the company on an eco-tour, first to the Amazonas city of Manaus, then on a five-day boat trip up the Rio Negro. It is on the Rio Negro that things go horribly wrong; they are kidnapped, the boat's crew murdered.

There's a lot in this book. Andrew Pyper is known for writing genuinely frightening stuff and the lawless heart of the Amazon rain forest up where the borders between the countries blur and where illegal activity is almost a given is a great setting. There's a mix of Western eco-tourists, anthropologists, illegal gold miners, indigenous peoples, pirates and criminals as well as the honest people just trying to get by. Crossman is about as well prepared to survive in a jungle environment as anyone who has spent her life living in the world of academe. That said, the final pages of the novel don't quite hang together as well as they might. ( )

Reviewed by PB. He thought it was an excellent thriller. Full review: http://www.canadianauthors.net/p/pyper_andrew/trade_mission_the.php