by Janet Evanovich Lee Goldberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 25, 2014
Less funny than Evanovich’s knockabout Stephanie Plum adventures but less mannered and annoying too: a comfy seriocomic...
A second round of unlikely larceny for FBI agent Kate O’Hare and her prey and partner, nonpareil con man Nicolas Fox (The Heist, 2013).
Under pressure from its creditors in Beijing, the White House has agreed to return a Qing dynasty statue of a bronze rooster to the Imperial Gardens, from which French and British forces carried it off 150 years ago. The only problem is that the rooster, currently housed in the Smithsonian, is a fake; someone stole the real rooster years ago and replaced it with a counterfeit. Kate and Nick, charged with finding the real rooster and switching it back before billionaire businessman Stanley Fu arrives to take it back home, waste no time in getting down to work. They fly to Scotland to bribe Nick’s mentor, retired thief Duff MacTaggert, to identify the thief and then assemble a team to go after Carter Grove, the former White House chief of staff Duff fingers. But Grove, an old political hand who’s now CEO of the mercenary services organization BlackRhino, is no ordinary target, and the pair has their work cut out for them. Even after they’ve stolen the bronze bird, further complications arise. Fu has arrived stateside a few days ahead of schedule and packed the phony rooster in the safe aboard his private luxury jet. Grove, missing the rooster, sends glamorous assassin Alexis Poulet after the thieves. Worst of all, their success has opened Nick’s eyes to an irresistible temptation to go up against Grove once more.
Less funny than Evanovich’s knockabout Stephanie Plum adventures but less mannered and annoying too: a comfy seriocomic caper just right for beach reading while you wait for the inevitable summer movie.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-54308-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1997
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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