OPINION:
There is something refreshing about a book that has no pretensions to either shock you or improve your mind but simply to devote itself to entertainment.
This applies to the latest melodramatic fluff whipped up by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. It is fun. The plot is hilariously unlikely, and the characters make no claim to gravity. There is Kate O-Hare, an allegedly tough FBI agent who is perpetually on the track of Nick Fox, the international criminal and con artist. She’s also in love with him, but that doesn’t get in the way of her work. She even has cut a deal with her FBI superiors that she can work as a team with the irresistible Fox as long as they travel the world capturing and killing the worst and most wanted criminals.
In this case, it is a monster called Menendez, who has had superb cosmetic work done on his face so that almost nobody knows who he is anymore. Except for Reyna, his Uzi-armed bodyguard who gets her kicks from torture. Her boss has nothing against torture, but he is also addicted to golden chocolates, which, of course, are drugged so those who take a bite become victims. In case the reader is bored, there is Jake O’Hare, a veteran of covert military operations who is also Kate’s father and shares her passion for fast food. He is part of his daughter’s team and is the kind of father who gives her a hand grenade for Christmas. He is delighted when she tells him she is involved in taking down the drug lord of a “global narcotics empire.” That means, she explains unnecessarily, “a rogue operation on foreign soil without any backup, going up against a sadist and his army of trained killers.”
What she needs from Jake, Kate explains, is veterans like him with naval experience who will be paid top dollar for risking their lives. Jake says his guys will do the job for fun, observing dryly, “It beats the hell out of dying of boredom.”
It isn’t so much a book as a romp, and both Kate and Nick distinguish themselves for being charming as well as outrageous. You have to feel sorry for Menendez and his gorgeous but wicked Reyna because there is no way they can win. If the FBI doesn’t finish them off, Kate and Nick will.
It’s the kind of book to take on a plane trip because it is almost guaranteed to amuse its readers. You can read it safe in the knowledge that the wicked Reyna has nothing on Kate, especially when she dares to feed the FBI agent’s father a poisoned chocolate and gets knocked out and tied to bedposts for her trouble. Reyna isn’t even grateful. When rescued by a guard, she breaks his neck because he has seen her “subjugated and powerless” and she can’t have that. “He had to die, but she knew it wasn’t fair and offered her sincere apology to his corpse.”
Menendez is captured as well after the police find him unconscious in a stairwell with his name inked across his forehead. There are other eccentric characters, some of them British police who share Kate’s love for fish and chips. Keep in mind that since about four-dozen books already are out about this delectable couple, given the speed at which the plot moves, you can expect four dozen more. Enjoy.
• Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and The Baltimore Sun.
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