Book Review: The Chase

Book: The Chase (Fox and O'Hare book #2) by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

Source: The Library

Rating: 1 star

Review:

The Chase wasn't as good as the first book, The Heist or even as good as the slightly subpar third book, The Job. It seemed a little too ridiculous with so many things needing to happen in a short amount of time. Despite including a lot of action, the story was boring.

This begins with FBI Agent Kate O'Hare and notorious con man Nick Fox being tasked with trying to con Carter Grove, a former White House Chief of Staff who is now running a ruthless private security company. They needed to get into his highly secured home to retrieve a Chinese artifact. The item had been stolen from the Smithsonian and not wanting to endure the humiliation, the theft had been covered up by both the museum and the U.S. government. But a problem has surfaced where the artifact was scheduled to be returned back to China, leaving Kate and Nick with a very short window of opportunity of getting it back.

They put together their con (which included actor Boyd Capwell and a former security technician Joe Morey) and was able to acquire the artifact. However another problem soon came up, when businessman Stanley Fu, the person who was there to take back the artifact arrived early and had already taken into possession the fake artifact on his secured plane.

Now, Kate and Nick needed to figure out a way to get on Fu's plane and switch out the artifact before the plane reaches it's destination and along for the ride is Alexis Poulet, one of Carter Grove's murderous security minions. Realizing the theft, Grove sent Poulet to get back the real artifact for him.

Grove looking to speed up the retrieval and to get information about those who conned him, sent out goons from his private security to get answers. Nick and Kate barely made it out of China and once back in the U.S. Grove was now on to them. And to stop him, Nick and Kate decide to pull off another con and bring in their A-Team (Boyd, Joe and Willie) to help them.

This could have been so much better because it just felt like the story got away from the authors and it was trying too hard to be suspenseful as well as doing way too many things. This story also felt as if it was much longer than it should have been. There were too many useless scenes and there was no character development for Kate and Nick nothing changed with their characters. I'm so tired of reading about Kate's love of fast food there is no way that she can be as healthy as she is described as being if all she ever eats is junk food and fast food. At least show her eating a salad from time to time with her fast food and showing her training if she's this amazingly skilled and fit person.

So far, out of three books of this I'm sure ongoing series, the first book has been the best one.