BRILLIANT

A witty page-turner from the author of, most recently, Insatiable (2001).

The urbane Kick Keswick is senior executive assistant at the venerable London auction firm of Ballantine & Co. The daughter of an Oklahoma prostitute, Kick never had a leg up in the world until she was 18—when she was picked up (literally) by Sir Cranmer Ballantine, who spied her stranded in a pouring rain, gave her a lift to Claridge’s, and made her his mistress. Eventually, Kick became Cranmer’s secretary as well, a post she kept when his son Benjamin took over the business—to disastrous effect. So incompetent was Benjamin that, within a few years, Ballantine had been bought out by American millionaire Owen Brace (though Sir Cramner had set up a secret trust that still allowed Kick anonymously to control 15 percent of the business). Owen brought in a passel of Americans who knew even less about the auction trade than Benjamin did, but he was smart enough to keep Kick, who knew all the upper-echelon secrets of the London art market and was able, for a start, to convince Owen not to wear gold chains when making sales pitches to British lords. Soon Ballantine’s is getting high-profile commissions again and Kick has once more become the boss’s mistress. But she has a few secrets up her sleeve: in fact, she has a secret identity. Not only does she control part of Owen’s business behind his back, but she’s a jewel thief who processes her loot through a complicated network of Lichtenstein banks. Her latest haul came from Lady Melody Carstairs, whose boudoir Kick burgled while Owen was downstairs negotiating an auction contract: a contract that Lady Melody signed seconds before falling dead. As Kick prepares the jewels for sale, she grows increasingly troubled. Theft is one thing—but murder?

Despite much insider lore about jewelry and objets d’art, a suspenseful account, with humor and a real sense of style.