Book Review: Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter

Note: this book review may contain spoilers for other books in the series

When it comes to speedy pacing, I suspect that Ally Carter has few rivals: Rick Riordan may get a look in and Michael Scott may be able to sneak a peek, but by the time they did so Carter wouldve moved on. If you like to wallow in beautiful details and clever subtleties, Carters books likely arent for you. If, on the other hand, youre a child of the Twitter generation, struggle to sit through anything longer than a commercial, and got through high school by reading abridged versions of classics, well, youre probably in your element.

Out of Sight, Out of Time, the fifth instalment in Carters best-selling Gallagher Girls series, features all of the frenetic pacing, jokes about disabling operatives using nothing more than an empty tube of toothpaste and a choice phrase in Swahili, and'double, triple and quadruple crossings'that weve come to expect these books. However, despite its breathless pacing, it also shows a more mature side of Carter as an author, with improvements in characterisation and thematic depth.

Where its predecessors followed fairly similar plot progressions not unlike those of the Harry Potter'books, Out of Sight, Out of Time'differentiates itself immediately by picking up not within the hallowed walls of the Gallagher Academy, but rather in a monastery in the Alps, where protagonist Cammie Morgan has just woken from a coma. This set-up opens up the narrative possibilities available to the author, and makes for a refreshingalbeit not always successfulchange in approach.

Carter plays up the coma element with a camp amnesia/sleeper-agent subplot: upon awakening from said monastery, Cammie realises that shes lost all memory of the past summer, and is determined to retrace her footsteps to fill in the gaps. The result is various around-the-world jaunts, explorations of secret hiding places, revelations about special bits of jewellery and bets being made on whether its possible to be a quintuple agent and, if so, what the pay would be like (okay, I made up that last one, but there is at the very least a triple agent in this book, and youd want some serious danger money coming in if you were in this persons shoes).

But yet, this outwardly different plotting approach is actually a decoy, with the end result being something akin to Memento: kind of cool when played backwards, but when pieced together, actually a fairly straight-forward narrative. Tricksy! As might be expected given the previous books, the plot can eventually be summarised thusly: the dastardly Circle is out to get Cammie, who must use all of her wiles to remain a step ahead of them at all times whilst simultaneously trying to figure out whom to trust and what on earth happened to her missing father.

Its fun, and its zippy, but even with the amnesia element thrown in, its so very familiar. Though the latter few books in the series have offered some welcome character growth, I cant help but feel that the plot arc is stagnating, offering us only the tiniest of reveals (and the inevitable cliffhanger) upon the completion of each outing. This is particularly true in the case of this volume, which culminates with only the most incremental of plot arc advances.

Moreover, though perhaps its the cautious old lady in me, I cant help but think that a world-renowned organisation of spies would be, oh, just a wee bit more'careful when it comes to undertaking their super-secret spy missions. How is it possible that Cammie, despite being in a safe house and surrounded by a half-dozen top-notch spies, is able to end up sleep-walking the streets of Rome? (And indeed, how is this possible even without all of the above security?) Why on earth is Cammie so willing, when raiding a bank vault for an uber-important clue, perfectly willing to trust a random guy who appears out of nowhere (and who may as well have uttered the line, Why hello there, trusting young girl. I am not at all a suspicious man who wishes to kill you.)? I understand that Cammie is suffering from memory loss, but goodness, does this go hand in hand with utter disregard for self-preservation*?

The Gallagher Girl books are without a doubt cheery, breezy reads, and I do appreciate the fact that Carters characters are diverse, supportive and feministand that the love interest is actually a nice chap rather than a moony, oppressive stalkerbut I cant help but feel that a little more rigour needs to be applied in terms of the advancement of the plot.

*If these are the sorts of people heading up our intelligence agencies, its no surprise that this case of this MI5 bloke being found zipped up in a suitcase was labelled as potentially suspicious only after trying to re-enact the event 300 times.

Rating: (not bad)