The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

I saw this book when it first came into the library and I figured I'd give it a try since I enjoy Evanovich's Stephenie Plum series. And well it was refreshing to finally see a couple of strong female characters, ones who have kick ass skills and know how to use them (instead of Stephenie and Lula from Plum who are always ridiculous) it fell far from the mark I was expect.

By looking at the book flap I expected this to be less about just Kate O'Hare and more about Fox as well. After all this is clearly a start of a series which will star both of them. But all the background information, personal details, and inner monologues were all Kate. Fox was nothing but a cardboard cutout version of the sexy conman and he never really evolved. I didn't learn anything to flesh out his character but I would have liked to.

And even though the reader did learn more about Kate it didn't seem to make sense. She was set up to be a tenacious FBI agent (hell she's so bad ass that she punched out her commander when she was a Navy SEAL because he made a pass at her) and occasionally she talked about how she didn't always play by the rules. I know it was for a con and all but by the end of the book descriptions of Kate's hot body were abundant but anything kick ass she did was basically glossed over in a sentence or two. I would have liked for the focus to be on her analytical skills instead of on thoughts like "eww, he's such a pig."

I also expected this book to be a little bit more serious than the Plum novels, more high speed crime and drama. And it did get a little gritty but then the authors (I'm betting on Evanovich because of the similarities to the Plum series) they tried to insert too much humor into situations where it wasn't needed. A scene where the focus is more on a man's anatomy than how O'Hare can get out of the situation. The ending couple of paragraphs that come straight out of a fanfiction scene written by a twelve year old like "create a scene where the character's aren't doing anything dirty but everyone else thinks they are and go."

This will not be a series that I will continue because I felt it promoted itself as a more serious crime drama and it was not and because the characters were so dull and flat I just didn't care about them.