As I wrote recently in another review, I love heist stories, either in books or movies. I usually love them from the thieves’ perspective but Jennifer Giacalone got me invested in the detective side. With Fleur and Renata, she gives readers two captivating characters and more than one fascinating relationship. The theft of a painting from the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (Italy) brings them back to work together again for the first time in five years to resume the chase of elusive thief Gustave. They’re both Europol agents, one from Netherlands, one from Italy. They have very different personalities—one icy, one fiery—and modi operandi and they complement each other perfectly. They also used to be married and the failure of that partnership didn’t come from any lack of love for one another.

I enjoyed this exciting novel very much, despite the slightly uneven pacing and the fact that it could have benefited from tighter editing/proofreading. The writing is good but a couple of inaccuracies and several word repetitions could have been avoided, for instance. Astute plots deserve more incisive phrasing. That said, the author very cleverly weaves tension from both the investigation that delves into the parallel art world of stolen pieces, with cameos of the Russian mafia, and the love/hate bond between two women whose lives aren’t really complete without the other.

Read Art of the Chase:

Bookshop.org

amazon

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