The Birthday Girl

by Stephen Leather

Book Overview

Tony Freeman rescued Mersiha when she was fighting for her life in war-torn Yugoslavia. Now she's his adopted daughter, the perfect all-American girl, and it seems like her past is another country. But Mersiha has been trained to kill. And when she discovers that Freeman's company is being subjected to a sinister takeover bid, she decides to help - whatever the risks. The consequences of her actions are lethal, for Mersiha has unearthed a conspiracy...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340660686
• ISBN13: 9780340660683
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Length: 506 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 4.5" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

"It's OK, pumpkin. The bullets will just punch holes in this hot air balloon and pass on through. We

Everything you really want to know about THE BIRTHDAY GIRL's plot has been nicely written by Mr. Haschka. I agree with him that this was a suspenseful thriller and there were a few unexpected twists and turns that will keep the reader hooked. The reason I had to give this novel by Stephen Leather 4 stars instead of 5 was the fact that he used too many British-isms, (e.g., boot = car trunk, rubbish bin = trash can, knickers = panties, etc.) which were distracting. I mean, the story takes place in Baltimore, MD and Estes Park, CO. The father, Tony, is originally from Scotland, but he is married to an American woman and has lived and worked in the US long enough have learned to speak our form of English. Besides, he isn't the one saying these things...the author is. Granted, the book was published in the UK but I still think Mr. Leather should have used terms we use here. He did, after all, work in Baltimore for a few years himself and is familiar with the lingo. O...and the fact that Tony calls his step-daughter, the sweet and deadly Mersiha, "pumpkin" just about every time he talks to her...even when being chased by bad guys trying to shoot holes thru the two of them...also was distracting. Nitpicking aside, I enjoyed THE BIRTHDAY GIRL and highly recommend it. I don't think Stephen Leather is capable of writing a bad novel..but that's my opinion.

Not your standard issue Daddy's Little Girl

Fathers historically worry that their daughters will be sexually and emotionally misused by boys when they start to date. I don't think Tony Freeman of THE BIRTHDAY GIRL need worry about his Daddy's Little Girl, but, rather, should fear mightily for the boys. Freeman is CEO of CRW Electronics, a defense contractor that manufacturers mine clearance systems. On a clandestine mission to fragmented Yugoslavia to sell the devices to the Christian Serbs, Tony is taken hostage by Bosnian Muslims. One of his captors is twelve year-old Mersiha, who, at this early age, has learned how to hate and mercilessly kill. But, Freeman also perceives her as a vulnerable young girl, and, when he's ultimately rescued, shields Mersiha with his own body and takes in the leg the bullets meant for her. Subsequently, he springs Mersiha from a Serbian-run concentration camp and takes her back to America where he and his wife Katherine adopt her as their own daughter. Flash forward three years. Mersiha is now, to all appearances, a well-adjusted, happy teenager on the verge of her sixteenth birthday. She's seeing a mental therapist for nightmares stemming from her and her family's brutal treatment by the Serbs, but, hey, getting therapy is as American as apple pie. She's step-Daddy's Little Girl. So, when she discovers that Katherine is committing adultery and CRW's existence is threatened by expatriate Russian mobsters, Mersiha decides to give her Old Man a helping hand without his knowledge, but with the aid of the Heckler & Koch handgun, a familiar weapon from the bad old days in the Old Country, that Tony keeps locked in the gun cabinet. THE BIRTHDAY GIRL is an engaging read that I finished in three days despite the annoying intrusions of a career and home chores. What prevents me from awarding five stars was its complete lack of subtlety, something I value more highly now than I did when I cracked my first book five decades ago. When the ending involved a pursuit from Baltimore to the Colorado Rockies, and, specifically, the final chase of a hot air balloon by Bad Guys on snow mobiles, it began to read like a James Bond thriller. And I wish that author Stephen Leather could have somehow kept his heroine's atypical propensities hidden to the reader behind her normal, adolescent facade to the very end, thus providing a jaw-dropping plot twist to an otherwise clever premise. These quibbles aside, THE BIRTHDAY GIRL is one of Leather's better offerings.