Overview:
Dorotea DeVillardi is ninety-one years old, gorgeous, and worth a fortune. Matt Friedrich’s going to steal her.
The Nazis seized Dorotea’s portrait from her Viennese family, then the Soviets stole it from the Nazis. Now it’s in the hands of a Russian oligarch. Dorotea’s corporate-CEO grandson played by the legal rules to get her portrait back, but he struck out. So he’s hired the DeWitt Agency to get it for him – and he doesn’t care how they do it.
Now Matt and Carson, his ex-cop partner, have to steal Dorotea’s portrait from a museum so nobody knows it’s gone, and somehow launder its history so the client doesn’t have to hide it forever. The client’s saddled them with a babysitter: Dorotea’s granddaughter Julie, who may have designs on Matt as well as the painting. As if this wasn’t hard enough, it looks like someone else is gunning for the same museum – and he may know more about Matt and Carson’s plans than he should.
Matt went to prison for the bad things he did at his L.A. art gallery. Now he has a chance to right an old wrong by doing a bad thing for the best of reasons. All he has to do is stay out of jail long enough to pull it off.
My Review:
This is the second book in the Dewitt Agency Files series. I read and reviewed the first one for the Novel Adventures Book Club earlier this week so if you haven't seen that yet, make sure to check it out. I enjoyed the first one but had some issues with the pacing and lack of details as far as back story goes. This book explains the circumstances behind the incident which sent Matt to prison a few years ago but let me start at the beginning.
In this book, Matt is again hired by Allyson and paired with Carson to steal back the portrait of Dorotea DeVillardi which is hanging in a museum in England. To complicate matters even further, Dorotea's granddaughter Julie has been sent by her cousin to watch over the proceedings.
There was definitely character development in this book but I still found Matt to be fairly weak and Carson to be way too prickly. We still don't know enough about her to understand her behavior, at least not to the extremes she seems to take things, and that leaves me frustrated. I want to like her but it's hard.
As with the first book, the pacing is a little off and there is just too much unnecessary detail about things like dinner. I also don't like that Matt always seems to hook up with the client. I get that it's been a long time for him but I could do without the James Bond Romeo thing.
The incident that sent Matt to prison was finally explained and I was glad to have closure on it because it helped explain a lot about Matt and why he is choosing to go into the art-stealing world. It's not exactly a Robin Hood type theme because he is stealing the art to give it back to the rightful owners but the reader can certainly understand his motivation to do so now.
I do like the series but I hope it picks up the pace a bit. I want to learn more about the characters and hope Matt grows a backbone soon.
Have you read this series? What do you think so far?
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