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GUILTY PLEASURES by Donna Hill

GUILTY PLEASURES

by Donna Hill

Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35421-5
Publisher: St. Martin's

A couple of seasoned con artists tackle their toughest challenge to date.

For ten years, Eva and Jake Kelly have been hustling to support their flashy lifestyle. They rationalize their crimes by blaming their impoverished upbringing: They steal to make up for all the things they were deprived of as children. Reveling in their riches, they’re thrilled to put their troubled pasts behind them and enjoy splashy shopping sprees. Another plus to thieving is the role it plays in this oversexed duo’s extremely physical relationship; ripping off unsuspecting victims serves as foreplay. It seems inevitable that Eva and Jake’s luck will run out, and sure enough, greed gets the best of these thrill-seekers when a Las Vegas con goes bad. Their mark, a Midwestern businessman, turns out to be a poor choice; he’s married to an FBI agent, who hatches a plan to turn would-be blackmailers Jake and Eva into her pawns. If they don’t help her steal a cache of diamonds from a South American drug lord, she threatens to put them behind bars for extortion and theft. The plot, silly from the beginning, becomes simply ridiculous as the Kellys board the very swank cruise ship on which the drug lord is transporting his stash. Hill appears to have done little research to support this crime caper. She glosses over details about locks, computers codes and counterfeiting, unavoidable elements of modern action and suspense novels, in favor of sex scenes. The author does have a knack for getting down and dirty in the bedroom, but the story is otherwise a snooze.

Unimaginative plot and tiresome writing leave the reader stranded at sea. After 28 novels (Divas, Inc., 2004, etc.), maybe Hill just has no more tricks up her sleeve.