Le casse

[b:The Heist 16169737 The Heist (Fox and O'Hare, #1) Janet Evanovich https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1371429330s/16169737.jpg 22016392] is an action caper story. Think G.I. Jane meets White Collar. There is plenty of action, some humor, and a nice con. However, it didn't really work for me, I think mainly because I couldn't make myself believe in or emphasize with the main characters. I kept on thinking “Give me a break” as I read it. Also the ending rather sucked. Daddy showing up just in time gave it a deus ex machina feel. I give it three stars just based on the humor and the over-the-top ballsiness of the plot.

This is the ol' ‘similar but different' scenario. Similar to the author's prolific Stephanie Plum series with ‘I hate you then I love you' romance but different career choices involved. And because of the male main character's career choice the author seems to be channeling [a:Donald E Westlake 40532161 Donald E Westlake https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s hilarious Dortmunder series, which starts with [b:The Hot Rock 596576 The Hot Rock (Dortmunder, #1) Donald E. Westlake https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1424652145l/596576.SY75.jpg 980279].I'll probably read 1 or 2 more of this series.

well...I guess I liked it well enough. This book might be decent start to another series, but it's difficult to predict until book 2 makes it's debut. There's promise but there are some areas that need work. Starting with the Kate/Nick chemistry. I got the impression that there should be boatloads of chemistry between the two, but it just kinda sat there on the page not really going anywhere. Maybe it was because most of the characters where as 2 dimensional as a cardboard cut out. The overall plot seemed to have walked it's way out of a cheesy, tv detective comedy (another reviewer compared this to USA's White Collar. I see the similarities but I like WC better). I did find myself liking the supporting characers - Kate's dad (who reminds me a little of Dr Sloan from Goldberg's Diagnosis Murder series), Willie, Boyd and Tom. They were quirky and fun.

What do you get when you assemble a rag-tag group of criminals and miscreants, including a shlock horror film director, a carpenter, an egotistical actor, a driver, an FBI agent, and a con man, to run their own covert con for the government? You might think this would be a setup for comedy gold, but it meanders into B-level sitcom territory.

// FBI Special Agent Kate O'Hare must track down a notorious con-man and use him to help take down an even bigger mark. //

Okay, so this started out pretty well. O'Hare seems like a fun gal with a quirky personality, but she has a penchant for narrowly missing her mark. Her mark is Nick Fox, a con artist who always gets away but does so in the most flamboyant way, all the while flirting with Kate. The overall setup was fun in the beginning, but the observational humor really did not do it for me. Don't get me wrong. I love a good joke, wisecrack, and pun, but when fast food name drops, TV show titles, and references to book plots are your mic-drop moments, I find it more eye-rolling than rolling on the ground with laughter. For example, Kate says the guys that she has dined with the most in the past few years have been Colonel Sanders, Long John Silver, Ronald McDonald, and the Five Guys. I rest my case.

// “The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.” //

The cat-and-mouse games are supposed to be fun! I had a hard time getting into the espionage moments because the amount of foreshadowing was overwhelming. You could guess exactly what was going to happen around every corner, and I think that it was by design. A quick quip or a throwaway joke does not mask the fact that the setups are just not exciting or plausible in any way, shape, or form. I don't know; everything felt extremely written and surface-level. It had quite a bit of potential. An Ocean's Eleven comedy sounds great, but it just missed the mark in my opinion. I will give it one thing though. The vehicles that were selected to do the cons were exquisite, beautiful, and out of the box. I'm looking at you, 60s-era Jaguar E-type.
// “Sometimes when a plan is right, everything else, all the things you can't control, falls into place just the way it should.” //

I'm king of struggling to think of anything else. It was just ok; would I recommend it? Probably not, but if the comedic parts worked for you, then you might like it. It just did not work for me.

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