feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2017-12-26 10:09 am
feather_ghyll) wrote2017-12-26 10:09 am
REVIEW: Uncommon Criminals
Uncommon Criminals: Ally Carter Orchard Books, 2012
The second in the Heist Society series, and fifteen year old Katarina ‘Kat’ Bishop has well and truly gone in for using her talents and skills as a thief to recover treasures stolen from Jewish families during the second world war. This means that she is not in South America, helping the family (their trade being thieving, and the head of the family being one Uncle Eddie). It also means that she hasn’t asked along the millionaire turned inside boy Hale, with whom she has a relationship dangling on the precipice of being more than friends; her cousin Gabrielle, the one person she can’t lie to; or anyone else who was part of the now legendary Henley Museum job of the first book.
But when a Pseudomina (a sacred name for the six or seven Families) is mentioned to her, Kat feels she has to help restore the legendary Cleopatra Emerald to its rightful owner, even if it’s a job that Uncle Eddie has expressly forbidden and even though the jewel is rumoured to be cursed. Even though they know better, loyally, Hale and Gabrielle help her out.
That is when Kat’s problems really begin. She has to stop working solo and get the old crew back together. She must even turn for help form unexpected sources to have a hope of defeating an enemy that could be Kat’s most dangerous and a glimpse of who she might grow up to be.
I liked that Carter corrected and faced one of the most egregious problems of the last book – ’There are too few of us in the Old Boys’ Club’ (p167) by introducing an important female character. Gabrielle gets a beefed up role too. Like Hale and Uncle Eddie, she’s mad with Kat, which Kat is rather slow to grasp. Driven partly by altruism, partly by the high of pulling off jobs, Kat is all at once sympathetic and infuriating – she and Hale manage to not discuss an awkward kiss that changes their relationship for chapters and chapters.
Carter has a facility for writing, which sometimes leads to glibness – I’d read a paragraph, think it flowed beautifully, but ask myself what it really meant. Psychobabble from a teen, really, as Kat tried to deal with her confused feelings (or didn’t) or with the job she had to do…. Still, Carter obviously had great fun coming up with the titles for the cons these thieves pull off and the plot. Much of the novel is set in Monaco, where Hale has a yacht, because of course he does, subverted by Kat being a terrible sailor and the enthusiastic Bagshawe twins’ ability to wreck stuff. Add to that the return of Nick the Interpol’s agent’s son and a job that seems impossible, and despite glamorous appearances, it’s a brew of tension.
There is a sense too, towards the end, that Carter is too busy trying to con or misdirect the reader, by not revealing things until the last minute. I shouldn’t have been as aware of that as I was. In the midst of all this, Kat learns an important life lesson.
I see there are two more books in the series.
The second in the Heist Society series, and fifteen year old Katarina ‘Kat’ Bishop has well and truly gone in for using her talents and skills as a thief to recover treasures stolen from Jewish families during the second world war. This means that she is not in South America, helping the family (their trade being thieving, and the head of the family being one Uncle Eddie). It also means that she hasn’t asked along the millionaire turned inside boy Hale, with whom she has a relationship dangling on the precipice of being more than friends; her cousin Gabrielle, the one person she can’t lie to; or anyone else who was part of the now legendary Henley Museum job of the first book.
But when a Pseudomina (a sacred name for the six or seven Families) is mentioned to her, Kat feels she has to help restore the legendary Cleopatra Emerald to its rightful owner, even if it’s a job that Uncle Eddie has expressly forbidden and even though the jewel is rumoured to be cursed. Even though they know better, loyally, Hale and Gabrielle help her out.
That is when Kat’s problems really begin. She has to stop working solo and get the old crew back together. She must even turn for help form unexpected sources to have a hope of defeating an enemy that could be Kat’s most dangerous and a glimpse of who she might grow up to be.
I liked that Carter corrected and faced one of the most egregious problems of the last book – ’There are too few of us in the Old Boys’ Club’ (p167) by introducing an important female character. Gabrielle gets a beefed up role too. Like Hale and Uncle Eddie, she’s mad with Kat, which Kat is rather slow to grasp. Driven partly by altruism, partly by the high of pulling off jobs, Kat is all at once sympathetic and infuriating – she and Hale manage to not discuss an awkward kiss that changes their relationship for chapters and chapters.
Carter has a facility for writing, which sometimes leads to glibness – I’d read a paragraph, think it flowed beautifully, but ask myself what it really meant. Psychobabble from a teen, really, as Kat tried to deal with her confused feelings (or didn’t) or with the job she had to do…. Still, Carter obviously had great fun coming up with the titles for the cons these thieves pull off and the plot. Much of the novel is set in Monaco, where Hale has a yacht, because of course he does, subverted by Kat being a terrible sailor and the enthusiastic Bagshawe twins’ ability to wreck stuff. Add to that the return of Nick the Interpol’s agent’s son and a job that seems impossible, and despite glamorous appearances, it’s a brew of tension.
There is a sense too, towards the end, that Carter is too busy trying to con or misdirect the reader, by not revealing things until the last minute. I shouldn’t have been as aware of that as I was. In the midst of all this, Kat learns an important life lesson.
I see there are two more books in the series.