THE HEIST

Every once in a while I come across a book which sets me back in my reading.It just makes me lose that momentum and even though I want to give up on it and move on to something else,it just refuses to let go.I let life overtake my reading and just play along for as long as it wishes to engage me and then one day just like that I gradually ease back into my reading mode again.'The Heist' was 'that book' for me this time.I didnt like it enough and yet I didnt want to leave it unfinished.

I normally refrain from picking,thrillers,mysteries,chases and investigation stories.I think they are too predictable and I never enjoy these books because my brain goes into over-drive and tries to figure out the plot even before the story actually begins.However I wanted to read something different this time and randomly picked this one up.For those of you who follow the tv series 'MONK',Lee Goldberg the co-author of this book happens to be the television writer for MONK...or the other way round depending on whether you like MONK or not.But lets not digress.Coming back to this story...

'The Heist' is the first adventure in a new series titled (Fox and O'Hare).Kate O'Hare is an FBI agent,chasing down the worlds most wanted criminals and putting them behind bars,while Nicolas Fox is a con-man,notorious for running elaborate scams on very high-profile people.He's also very charming,handsome and frustrating because he manages to slip away every time it looks like he is being captured.He knows that Kate O'Hare has been hot on his trail and finds it thrilling to be pursued by a beautiful woman.But just when it seems that he has been captured for good,he pulls off his greatest con of all and somehow convinces the FBI to let him work on a case with special agent Kate O'Hare.The task is to team up to capture a corrupt investment banker who's hiding on a private island in Indonesia.Nick,the con-man that he is ,along with his crew of con-artists,Kate and Kate's dad go on this mission.How they accomplish it is what this story was all about.

My Views:First and foremost...I thought the plot was contrived.Maybe this would have worked better on screen but it definitely didnt work for me as a novel.The plot wasn't original either and it did not take a rocket scientist to figure out where the story was headed.The first half of the book seemed totally disjointed from the latter half.We just got to know who Nick and Kate were in the first half and the actual story begins much later and ends just as fast.I was disappointed with the way it was written and I just trudged through the first half to get to the real plot.It was very difficult to imagine a plot like this and the story seemed unreal at every point.The chemistry between them was *yawn* oh-so-predictable,and I couldnt figure out the deal with the toblerone bars.The only redeeming quality about this book was the sparse humor and the exotic locales.

But of course,I could unknowingly be biased to this particular genre in fiction and therefore wasnt able to enjoy this book.It might work for some and you might actually enjoy it.This was my first Evanovich novel too,but I believe you need to give the author another chance before you write them off completely.This might not have been one of her best works.

I rate this book a 2 and a half out of five.