Thu 11 Jun 2015
Reviewed by David Vineyard: JANET EVANOVICH & LEE GOLDBERG – The Heist.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[10] Comments
JANET EVANOVICH & LEE GOLDBERG – The Heist. Bantam, hardcover, June 2013; paperback, February 2014.
It used to be when writers collaborated they actually collaborated, but today more often than not mega-sellers like Janet Evanovich (the Stephanie Plum series and Lizzy & Diesel series) provide front names for original work by others — often well known even bestselling writers like Justin Scott, Thomas Perry, Eric Lustbader, and Lee Goldberg.
Despite the picture of the two authors on the back of the jacket of the hardcover, there is little chance that Janet Evanovich actually wrote this, though she likely came up with the concept with her agent, publisher, and even Goldberg (a screenwriter, producer, and author).
Clive Cussler, James Rollins, and others have these franchises as do deceased writers such as Tom Clancy, Harold Robbins, Robert Ludlum, and in the past Alistair MacLean.
The Heist is a short book, under 300 pages, and basically reads like the pilot for a television series on one of the networks, loosely borrowed from Elmore Leonard’s Out of Sight, though slicked up more like Remington Steele than Leonard’s gritty charming book and the film it inspired.
Kate O’Hare is a gung-ho FBI officer with a special relationship with brilliant con man and criminal Nicholas Fox. As the book opens she is about to close in on Fox, and we learn some of their back story as she ponders catching him. The incident where he pulled off a heist and then hid in her hotel room plundering the mini-bar and even stealing the towels still irks her. But not as much as the Toblerones, her favorite candy bar, that he took.
Fox makes a wild escape from that trap, but she does get him, literally driving a bus into his car in pursuit soon after. They meet, flirt, she wants to kill him, and sleep with him — and then he escapes, almost impossibly on the way to court.
Kate flips out, and she reacts badly when she is not assigned the case. But she thinks she knows where Nick is; Mount Athos in Greece, where a priest calling himself Father Dowling recently arrived. Kate, a former SEAL (the authors acknowledge that Demi Moore aside there are no women SEALS, but they think there should be) whose father is a former SEAL, recruits him to help her, and she corners Fox, finally got him, a Federal fugitive. Done deal.
One problem. Nick is sitting there with her boss Jessup, and the Deputy Director of the FBI.
It will take a stretch of your imagination to bite on the next part, though it is one of those things in movies and television we shrug off with a smile depending on how much we enjoy the show (Castle is the best example). The major flaw here is this kind of thing is a harder sell in a book, and it is pretty much just dumped in your lap here. It seems the FBI is going to finance Nick’s swindles in return for freedom after five years, if he will help take down criminals they currently can’t touch. One of those handy secret funds Congress can’t trace will fund the thing.
This gets dumped on the reader about as gracelessly as they dump it on Kate after one of those phony test missions that only happen in books and movies when they don’t have enough story to fill the time given.
Meanwhile Nick will be on the Most Wanted list hunted by police around the world and Kate will be in charge of seeing he isn’t caught, unless he double crosses the FBI, which there is no guarantee he won’t do.
Of course she hates the idea.
He loves it. He can torment Kate, who is clearly interested in.
And he can steal more of her Toblerones.
Well, hard to blame her for her doubts, it is kind of stupid. You have to wonder they didn’t recruit G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt.
I always found It Takes a Thief a bit of a stretch as much as I enjoyed it.
Then again Sidney Reilly, the great British spy, was a serial bigamist who may have murdered at least one of his eleven wives, and Eddie Chapman, head of the Gelignite Gang in pre-War England, was one of the most effective British agents of the war, himself actually a handsome dashing womanizer who might of stepped out of a novel by Leslie Charteris written with Ian Fleming and Peter Cheyney.
It isn’t as if the OSS didn’t recruit Lucky Luciano to help us invade Sicily.
Not that any of that lifts this out of the realm of pure fantasy.
I just don’t happen to mind the realm of pure fantasy once in a while.
Their first big case fills out the second half of the book as they go after a corrupt investment banker hidden out on a private fortress island in Indonesia with a team that includes Kate’s dad, a wanted wheelman (have to have car chases), and a flamboyant actor, because two people can’t carry a series by themselves no matter how charming they are.
At this point they have added Mission Impossible to their list of creative borrowing.
Originality in Hollywood is stealing equally from everyone.
There are no surprises here, not a lot of suspense either, since there really isn’t time for either the romance or any of Nick’s schemes to play out.
Basically, like Goldberg’s books for the Monk series, this is a novelization of something that never got made.
But wait, because I actually liked a good many novelizations, and surprise surprise, I like this.
It’s fast, it’s fun, the characters are attractive, if cardboard, the action moves at a pace, and the writing, if cinematic, is literate, and the dialogue plays cute between Kate and Nick with at least what passes for sophistication on television. It’s not either version of The Thomas Crown Affair, but you can imagine Fox as Pierce Brosnan if you want.
That’s what this is: a novelization of an unsold pilot that was never produced. But it’s also a quick read, and I bought it remaindered for under $5, so for the hour and an half it kept me entertained, and I recommend it highly. Add more detail, more depth to the characters, a few more high concept set pieces, and more plot, and you would have a damn good book.
What you have anyway is a pleasant time killer on a level with the kind of books most of us readily devoured in the fifties and sixties in paperback originals and mid-list mystery fare. That’s not as faint praise as it may sound. Some of those were more pleasure to read than some better books, and this one is a light escapist work with a bit of charm, something sadly missing today.
And its not bloated. Every page and every word goes right to plot, character, and action — a bit mechanically, granted, but there’s no side trips to distract you.
If it is lying around or you run across it, read it, but don’t spend much looking for it.
The Fox and O’Hare series —
The Heist. June 2013.
The Chase. February 2014.
The Job. November 2014
June 11th, 2015 at 10:32 pm
I agree with this assessment except that I liked the book even more. Pure entertainment, and an expert job of it.
June 12th, 2015 at 6:47 am
I think the review is a little harsh. I liked it a lot too. The sequels are OK but the first one was the best. The most recent one was the weakest so maybe it’s already run out of steam.
June 12th, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Have not read the book but it sounds like something I’d enjoy. Couple of things. I read Goldberg’s blog and if I remember right he has discussed how the two write together, sharing ides, rewriting each other. I wish I could find those blogs but since Lee has visited here before I hope he will again and share with us how it all works.
There are women in the Seals. They are not in Team 6 but are in the Black Squadron and usually team with a male op and form a couple team. This is according to a recent NY Times article on the secret history of the Seals. I can’t get the link to work. Perhaps Steve can help.
June 12th, 2015 at 12:39 pm
I looked on Lee Goldberg’s blog and couldn’t find anything there about how the two of them approach writing books in the series.
I did discover that a fourth book is in the works: The Scam, due to be released on September 15, 2015.
And there are two short stories abut the characters: “Pros And Cons” and “The Shell Game.” These may be ebooks only.
June 12th, 2015 at 12:45 pm
Re the Seals: Here’s the link
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/world/asia/the-secret-history-of-seal-team-6.html?_r=0
and the relevant paragraph:
“Black Squadron has something the rest of SEAL Team 6 does not: female operatives. Women in the Navy are admitted to Black Squadron and sent overseas to gather intelligence, usually working in embassies with male counterparts. One former SEAL Team 6 officer said that male and female members of Black Squadron would often work together in pairs. It is called “profile softening,†making the couple appear less suspicious to hostile intelligence services or militant groups.”
June 12th, 2015 at 12:53 pm
Jeff, Comment #2. I don’t think David’s review as harsh, but as fair and balanced as I could hope for. I think that if I were to go to B&N to look for a copy, and I might, I’d know exactly what I was buying.
I know I’ve seen either this one or others in the series and passed them by, thinking them too soft and and maybe even silly for me. From David’s description, though, I’ve changed my mind. He makes the first one sound as though it would be fun to read.
For what it’s worth, I bought the first 10 or 12 Stephanie Plum books, but I confess I’m yet to read any of them.
June 12th, 2015 at 1:13 pm
Steve, thanks for supplying the link.
I really enjoyed the early Stephanie Plum books though I have always hated Lulu. The problem with the books are also the reason it continues to hit the best seller list. It is the same book. Characters rarely change or grow, the hooks remain the same, the story format remains the same. But that is what Evanovich’s fans demand. I do admire a writer who cares about her readership’s desires, but I will never read another Plum book either.
June 12th, 2015 at 8:46 pm
I was trying to balance liking the book without misleading anyone about what it is. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but it is predictable in the way a television pilot often is and none of the characters are fully realized much as in a television episode.
That said, it’s fun and well worth a read, but I wouldn’t work too hard to find it or the sequels.
Re the SEALS I was just quoting the book which goes back a few years and doesn’t distinguish any details like SEAL Team Six or Black Squadrons. Frankly it’s more on a television level in that way too.
But if you buy it and you like slick caper books and don’t mind that it is done simply and by rote (and well done) then you will likely get your money’s worth and have a good time.
That said, while Jovanovich has written some slim books, I don’t really get the feeling she participated great in this one, though she may well have discussed things on the phone with Goldberg and I’m sure she reads and approves what is written even making corrections since it is printed under her byline.
June 12th, 2015 at 9:53 pm
I stopped by Barnes and Noble this evening, so of course I took a look for THE HEIST. They had both that one and the second one in paperback, but after some deliberation, I passed them by. They were $8.99 each and by some magic of the printing process had been expanded to nearly 400 pages.
I skimmed through and decided that at this stage of my collecting career, for every book I buy, three have to be deacquistioned. With no disrespect to either author, I think I have three I’d rather have than THE HEIST, at least at cover price.
June 12th, 2015 at 11:13 pm
No, nearly $10 is too much to speculate. Try Walmart if you stop in there where I found it for $5 in hardcover and not bloated to 400 pages.
I made it about 86,000 words which is a bit below the 90k range many publishers are looking for.