I can, I guess, see why Ally Carter's HEIST SOCIETY draws in the teen girl crowd; this book, after all, is tailored for them. The premise is certainly attention-catching, especially if you're into heist and caper stories. HEIST SOCIETY affects the off-handed elan and cool of, say, OCEAN'S ELEVEN and succeeds at certain levels. To me, that book cover suggests a sort of callback to Audrey Hepburn circa BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. HEIST SOCIETY is a brisk and breezy read, and pretty good. But there are some issues.
I don't know that there are other books out there that feature teens more worldly and self-possessed than 15-year-old Katarina Bishop and the young crew she establishes. Kat, a larcenous prodigy, comes from a family of elite professional thieves, except that three months ago she abandoned that life of crime, her final con (or so she thought) that of enrolling herself into the prestigious Colgan boarding school. But - as they say - just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in...
Kat is lured back to the family business when her master thief of a dad becomes the primary suspect for the audacious theft of a private collection of paintings. Or Kat's family thinks so, as well as several Interpol agents. Kat's father denies having done the caper, but what really galvanizes Kat into action is that the seriously sinister hombre Arturo Taccone also believes her father to be the culprit. Taccone gives Kat a two week deadline to recover the paintings or dot dot dot... Two meager weeks for Kat not only to learn where the vanished paintings have gotten to but also to gather her own thieving crew to break in and steal them. There's no question that this is by far her most ambitious heist, and this with three months of rust on her.
There's, naturally, a fun, sophisticated element in Kat's jet-setting and globe-gallivanting ways, and it doesn't hurt that her former and once again teen partner-in-crime, Hale, is rich as Croesus. I also enjoyed the thieves' mythos which Ally Carter constructs around Katarina, and I particularly love the notion of legendary aliases which had been floating around forever in the thieves' world, aliases that ambitious thieves assume when they take on an epic caper. I will say that Carter maybe could have better developed her characters. Pretty much all the roles in the book are likable but feel straight out of stock casting. One particular character shows up late in the game, and Carter writes him in such a way that he seems only to serve as a foil for Hale and to introduce an added element of mystery. Out of all of Kat's interactions, the most fascinating for me is her dealings with the shady mobster Arturo Taccone. Speaking as a dude, I'm not so into Kat's teen romantic complications. I don't particularly find Hale dreamy or swoony or dashing. But the girls are eating up that aspect, so mission accomplished for the writer. At least, it's not as despicably icky as what's been going down in Twilight.
Ally Carter has also written the Gallagher Girls spy series, and HEIST SOCIETY was a fun enough read that I'm planning on checking out those other books. Thieves and con men are some of my favorite characters to read about or see films about, and so this book was never gonna get the bum's rush from me. There's also a bit of a history lesson as Carter instructs the reader on a point of artistic atrocity committed by the Nazi regime during World War II. Some things about the book bugged me, like the shallow characterization, as mentioned, but also that not enough time is spent on the big heist itself. And maybe security at London's imposing Henley museum isn't quite as impregnable as first made out to be. Kat herself, for a gifted thief and mastermind, doesn't do enough on page except rack up flying mileage, not with a deus ex machina like Hale hanging around. I will say that when the heist finally goes down, boy, there are some taut moments. But they don't really achieve the suspense and sudden reverses of OCEAN'S ELEVEN or THE ITALIAN JOB, if that's what you're comparing this to. Also, I thought there would be some sort of payoff with Uncle Eddie who had ordered Kat not to meddle, but there was nothing there.
We never do learn the identity of the mysterious Visily Romani, and maybe that could lead into the sequel (and I'm guessing there will be a sequel). HEIST SOCIETY isn't shabby at all, a fun, lightweight caper novel. Perfect for a day at the beach or a lazy Sunday spent on the porch. Give it a try, grab some iced tea, go prop your feet up, maybe on a Twilight book.
