Under interrogation after killing a man, Jane Charlotte tells a strange tale of fighting evil as an agent of a shadowy organization. Jean Charlotte is in a mental institution in Las Vegas, being questioned by a man called Dr. Vale. We learn that she is in there for killing a man, or as she puts it “killing a man I wasn't supposed to”.
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According to her she is actually an agent for a secret nameless organization, specifically a division of the organization called Bad Monkeys.
Dr. Vale asks her to explain, and she tells him he will just think she is crazy, but goes on to tell her story anyway starting from her first encounter with the organization at age fourteen.
She was sent to live with her aunt and uncle by her mother because of their deteriorating relationship and the fact that instead of looking after her little brother Phil she would go off and leave him, or get him into trouble.
Soon after arriving at her new school, she realizes that the janitor is a serial killer who has been killing kids in the area. While trying to get proof for the police she ends up sneaking around the janitors house as he takes a shower. The phone rings and she picks it up, to her surprise the voice on the other end addresses her by name and tells her to be careful, that the man is a “bad monkey” (organization slang for an evil person). She thinks she has the evidence and tries to expose him to the police, but they dismiss her as a troubled kid.
Later as she is doing a crossword puzzle she finds several of the clues have been designed to send her a message, telling her to look under her sink for something called a “NC gun”. She looks and finds a bright orange gun that looks like a toy. Her phone rings, she picks it up and the voice warns her that the janitor is in her house. She shoots him and he collapses, then she finds herself very sleepy and when she wakes up the body is gone. The gun is missing as well, but a strange coin has been left in its place.
Dr. Vale checks up on her story and tells her the janitor was found dead, but not shot. Jane Charlotte tells him the NC gun simulates natural causes, like a heart attack.
She continues her story; she grows up, re-establishes some contact with Ohil, and goes to Berkeley for five years. But she finds herself just marking time waiting for the organization to contact her again, feeling she has a destiny with them to make the world better.
When she turns thirty without hearing from them her brother visits her suggests she doesn't have to wait, she can do good all by herself. So she starts volunteering with charities but finds it unsatisfying, she next tries to find a more active job like law enforcement but can't. Soon she is despairing again when she gets another mysterious call, this time with no one on the other end. She tells the silence that if they are going to contact her they should soon.
The next day she gets a jury summons and decides it is a message from the organization. She comes home to find a strange man in her home who tells her he is from the organization. He tells her they are recruiting and to show up at a specific location tomorrow.
The next day she is given an NC gun and a test; the gun only has one shot and she has to choose between two evil men, one is the killer in her jury case and another a serial killer. She chooses to kill one and frame the other for his murder. The organization disapproves of her tactics but tells her she is in.
As she tells her story Dr. Vale prods her about parts of it that seem to contradict the official record. She dismisses these arguments saying the organization has a counterintelligence branch known as Catering, which alters records to hide their activities. Fact-checking her story is pointless, she claims. Dr. Vale points out that is a convenient excuse.
She continues telling him about her subsequent activities for the organization, mentioning also that they have eyes and ears nearly everywhere thanks to a branch called the Panopticon. She talks about increasingly outlandish adventures and mentions her brother again,
Dr. Vale interrupts and tells her he knows the truth about her brother. The reason she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle was because her brother disappeared while she was supposed to be watching him and is assumed to have died at the hands of a child molester active in her neighborhood at that time.
She admits it, but says the conversations she described with her brother just happened in her head so it wasn't really a lie. Then she says that her brother is still alive and a member of an opposing organization called the Troop, which recruited from the molester, who was also one of their agents.
She tells Dr. Vale that her most recent assignment was actually to find her brother, who is a high ranking member of the troop, and to take and deprogram him for the organization. The mission goes badly and Jane is the only survivor which makes the organization suspicious of her. She tells them that there was a female Troop agent, also called Jane, who committed the acts she is now suspected of.
Dr. Vale points out how delusional this sounds, a Good Jane and a Bad Jane fighting to save her long lost brother from the forces of evil. He also tells her that he has looked into her records and found that her mother accused her of being an evil child.
Jane continues her story, talking about the final confrontation which landed her in the psych ward. Bad Jane told her that Phil wanted her to join the troop and that they knew she secretly wanted to as well. She pretends to go along for long enough to find out Phil's location and then tells it to a Bad Monkey agent. However when she realizes that they intend to kill Phil, she turns on the agent and kills him instead. This is the unauthorized kill that landed her in the psych ward.
She tells Dr. Vale that she couldn't let them kill Phil, but she also knows she can't save him, he can only save himself.
As she comes to the end of the story Dr. Vale gets up to take a break and finds the guards are gone. Jane undoes her handcuffs and stands up, she tells him this is not a psych ward at all but an organization building, and that she knows his true identity. He is her brother Phil.
She breaks open the tape recorder revealing there is a bomb inside, Phil was planning to kill her just now. She tells him that was his last chance, and she her part of the bargain with the organization was to kill him if she couldn't save him. She raises her gun to shoot him but nothing happens.
Phil reveals that it was actually all a trick, she is the one who is the prisoner after all. The organization has discovered that she is a deep cover agent for the Troop from day one, she gave them her brother Phil in the first place as her ticket in. They recruited her knowing this, reasoning they could keep an eye on her that way.
The book ends with Phil raising the gun to shoot her.
Best part of story, including ending:
The pace is fast and for the first half or so it's a lot of fun, especially as you try to figure out if Jane is insane or telling the truth (or some combination of the two) but as it continues it gets increasingly convoluted, and the last part is just a mess of double crosses and plot twists that end up yanking you out of the story by the end.
Best scene in story:
There is a scene when Bad Jane uses some psychedelics that allow the taker to alter physics, later Good Jane does as well. The action sequences under their effect are pretty surreal and really cool, it would be great to see that part on film.
Opinion about the main character:
Jane is evil, obviously, but even when you think she is good she is pretty amoral and about halfway through the book she hits rock bottom and has some very questionable sexual encounters.
