Monday, December 14, 2015

The Job

A Fox and O'Hare Novel
Janet Evanovich
Lee Goldberg

Nick and Kate are charged with taking down an international drug smuggler. But nobody knows where he is, or what he looks like. No problem, just offer him some chocolate. Oh, and a bucket of gold. Oh, and a VR tour of a sunken ship recovery with a fake submarine while a psychopathic killer decides she has had enough of Kate. All in a days work.

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Sunday, December 13, 2015

The Chase

A Fox and O'Hare Novel
Janet Evanovich
Lee Goldberg

Nick and Kate are out to take down the corrupt former white house chief of staff. He now runs the military contractor Black Rhino, and uses his business to steal priceless works of art. Our hero's use a con to steal them back. Well, in particular, to steal back a Chinese chicken statue before it needs to be repatriated from the Smithsonian back to China. So they set up the heist to steal the chicken, run in to trouble along the way, and end up taking down their target for everything he owns. It is the "run into trouble along the way" that is fun.

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Saturday, December 12, 2015

The Heist

A Fox and O'Hare Novel
Janet Evanovich
Lee Goldberg

Nicolas Fox is high on the FBI's most wanted list as a master thief and con-man. Kate O'Hare is the FBI special agent leading the task force to capture him. When she finally does get him into custody, she is able to finally relax and move on to more mundane assignments... until Fox escapes. Or, that is until Kate finds that her bosses have cut a deal with Fox to allow him to go free as long as he works with the FBI (that is, works with Kate) to bring down bigger fish. So begins a love-hate relationship between criminal and cop. In this episode, Fox and O'Hare develop a con that brings down a corrupt banker hiding out in Indonesia. As a con, there are multiple players involved (the driver, the set construction guy, the actor, the muscle, etc) and everyone plays their part. This is a fun book (that turns into a fun series) of a perfectly matched, yet mis-matched, set of partners out to clean up crime.

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Personal

A Jack Reacher Novel
Lee Child

An assassination attempt on the French president by a sniper leads to the conclusion that only 4 people in the world have the skill necessary to pull it off. Of course Reacher is one of them, but he alibis out quickly. And then he is pulled back into his old world, with his old boss, to track down and stop the killer from successfully completing the job. Of course, it isn't quite as cut and dried as someone wanting the French president dead. There is political and military intrigue, there is money and power involved, and clearly (according to the title) it is personal.

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Never Go Back

A Jack Reacher Novel
Lee Child

The end of a 4 novel story arc (that I am apparently reading backwards). Reacher reaches Virginia and goes to meet up with Susan Turner (because he liked her voice on the phone) who is an MP in his former job. But she is missing. And then fired. And then he is conscripted. And accused of murder. By this point in his civilian career, Reacher is no longer interested in being in the military. But he hangs around until he can figure out what is going on...

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