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Savvy,
26-year-old junior analyst Julie Laramie, employed in
Langley, Virginia, in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence,
spends most of her time analyzing satellite
intelligence. China -- and other portions of the far
east -- composes her assigned territory. Mornings, she
runs, heading out early from the Starbucks in her
neighborhood. Laramie leads a fairly ordinary, busy
life.
There isn't really a significant other in her life --
that is, so long as you don't count the crush on her
political science professor that went a little too far
back when she was at Northwestern. She still turns to
him occasionally for advice, and that is precisely what
she is doing at the beginning of Painkiller.
 Shortly
after this visit to Associate Professor Eddie Rothgeb,
we learn that Laramie has discovered, almost by
accident, evidence of a massive, clandestine military
buildup in China -- and elsewhere. Alerting her
supervisors, she's reprimanded for violating Agency
protocol and told to leave policymaking to the elected
officials. Like Cooper, Laramie knows she should leave
well enough alone, but her gut drives her on a course
toward career suicide -- and a bounty of evidence only
she seems to see. What she sees? A labyrinthine,
untraceable terrorist plot designed to cripple America
and shift the world order a few centuries backward.
Drawn down parallel paths peppered with a uniquely dark
and compelling chain of enemies -- a zombifying Haitian
witch doctor and a slave-trading albino serial killer,
to name just two -- Cooper and Laramie's cases soon
intertwine, and the pair find themselves caught at
opposite ends of the border-blurring terrorist
conspiracy set to turn the free world on its ear.
And maybe the presence of Cooper in her life will make
it easier for Laramie to leave that old college
professor in the dust . . .
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