A delightful caper: Fast-paced, atmospheric, and wryly amusing, the Kick saga (like the Dom Perignons Kick is so fond of)...
Another episode in the remarkable career of international jewel thief and connoisseur Kick Keswick follows her to France, where she’s in pursuit of a copycat burglar trying to pin a rap on her.
Readers of earlier installments will remember Kick (Brilliant, 2003, etc.) as a tough girl from Oklahoma who overcame a delinquent childhood to achieve fame and fortune in the most rarefied European circles as a happily delinquent adult. As secretary to and mistress of London auctioneer Sir Cranmer Ballantine, Kick got to know the world of art and jewelry from the inside, and she put her knowledge to good use as a cat burglar who in a few short years amassed the world’s largest secret cache of priceless jewels. As befitted a woman of style, Kick always left a calling card behind—a bouquet of shamrocks—leading the press to christen her “The Shamrock Burglar.” Now married to ex-Scotland Yard detective Thomas Curtis, Kick has been on the straight and narrow for nearly a year, retired in matrimonial bliss in Provence with the only man in the world who knows her true identity. But the honeymoon comes crashing down when Kick gets up one morning to find Thomas gone, and her own wall safe emptied of some of her most prized acquisitions. The next day the papers are full of accounts of a necklace stolen in Paris by someone who’s left a bouquet of shamrocks behind. Is Thomas (who has a secret past of his own) framing Kick? Or trying to save her hide? Kick can’t wait for an answer, so off she goes to crack the case. Send a thief to catch a thief? That’s been told before, but this one has a few twists that even Hitchcock never came up with.
A delightful caper: Fast-paced, atmospheric, and wryly amusing, the Kick saga (like the Dom Perignons Kick is so fond of) has aged well and lost none of its fizz.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-30381-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Well-written women’s weepie from the author of many, now with her first hardcover.
Blindness, babies, bathos.
When photojournalist Jessie Ryder finds that she’s losing her sight to a rare retinal disease, it’s time to take stock—and, at last, meet the child she gave away years before. She rails against her cruel fate as she leaves New Zealand for the Texas town where she grew up. After all, she’d stayed away, kept her distance—and kept her side of the bargain she made with God. She’d provided the best possible home for her newborn by handing her over to her sister Luz and her husband Ian. Even now that she’s a teenager, Lila has no idea that she was adopted (and there’s another thing even Luz doesn’t know). Lila escapes serious injury during a joyriding car accident that shakes the family out of its complacency and forces them to grapple with the Big Questions. Why does Ian, a Death Row lawyer, always have time for his clients but not for his family? Must Luz always shoulder most of the burden of raising the kids and running the house? Luz pines for what she perceives as her sister’s freedom, but Jessie, of course, isn’t really free. She’s always been haunted by what she never told Luz: Lila is the product of a long-ago, whirlwind affair with Ian. Her vision dimming day by day, Jessie wonders whether she’ll ever find happiness. There’s hunky rancher Dusty Matlock, father of an adorable toddler, still fending off media attention ever since his pregnant wife, comatose after a stroke, gave birth by Cesarean and expired a couple of years ago. Should Jessie give in to Blair LaBorde, tabloid reporter, and photograph Dusty? Perhaps. But will Jessie even admit that she’s losing her sight? Yes, once she shares her story yet again at the world-famous center for the blind not far away.
Well-written women’s weepie from the author of many, now with her first hardcover.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-55166-673-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
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Limited drama, minor angst, and mediocre writing.
There are too many packs of werewolves in the same Colorado mountains.
The Silver pack, well-manned and well-resourced, runs Silver Town and its surrounding territory. Eric Silver, park ranger and cousin to the pack leader, is on the hunt for a second pack, which may have been growing huge tracts of marijuana on the grounds of the local national park. But instead, he encounters a small, more agreeable pack led by the most beautiful she-wolf he's ever seen. Pepper Grayling is a perfectly capable alpha who's not interested in a mate, but she has to call on Eric and his family when a new danger threatens both of them. While Spear (SEAL Wolf in Too Deep, 2016, etc.) has written 18 prior books in the series, the worldbuilding is thorough enough that a reader can follow the pack structure and nature of the lupus garous without prior knowledge of the universe. There are certainly things a new reader can only guess at, but most of it is irrelevant to the story. A questionable number of alphas in various packs notwithstanding, the story is...readable. It's certainly a page-turner, but the entire story arc is little more than lukewarm. This is unfortunate considering the promise and importance of introducing an alpha female who is also a good pack leader. How many female alphas are there in paranormal romance? But the execution, from meeting to mating, as well as conflict and denouement, is just OK.
Limited drama, minor angst, and mediocre writing.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4926-2186-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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