Book Review: The Heist (Fox and O’Hare #1)

Genres: action, adventure, comedy

The 411 Junkie Rundown

Con man Nicholas Fox meets his match in Kate O'Hare, FBI. The first in an ongoing series by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, Fox and O'Hare are forced into an unconventional partnership that could very well be the best white collar crime and the FBI have ever seen.

The Hook: Sounded so similar to White Collar I just couldn’t resist!

Since I really enjoyed the Knight and Moon series Evanovich started about two years ago, I decided to take a peek at what other books of hers might interest me (ignoring, of course, my minor disappoint with how the Lizzy and Diesel novels are going). Someone mentioned this series and while I was hesitant at first because of the White Collar similarity I also couldn’t resist because of the White Collar similarity. If you haven’t guessed, I really love White Collar.

The Good

• Con man: Home field advantage. Honestly, we’ve seen the informant angle before. It’s nothing new, but what I like about this series is that Evanovich and Goldberg have Kate O’Hare, top-notch FBI agent, in Nick Fox’s world instead of the other way around. Nick is actually able to continue doing what he does best, con top-notch white collar criminals and Kate assists. I simply love this dynamic.
• The crew.  Not only do I love Kate and Nick. I love Kate and Nick and the cast of characters they team up with. A good con is always a team effort (at least, from what I’m reading) and I love the people Nick recruits in this first installment.
• The heist. For me, it’s always tricky when running with a long-standing series. Or, in this case, the possibility of a long-standing series because what if you get bored? What if you can’t find a good hook for the next book? Well, I really enjoyed the con in this one.

And the Not so Good

• Nada. 

More to be said . . .

I really thought this story was well written, well cast, and well presented. Cover to cover. As a matter of fact, it was such a fun read I read it a second time just a day or so ago. Not only did I enjoyed this book enough to read it twice in one month, but I also binge-read the entire series in about a week (it helped that I was sick for two weeks with nothing to do but read and watch TV) and ended up adding it to my permanent collection. It was the right amount of fun, adventure, and story that I would recommend it to anyone who loves contemporary adventures.