This is the second book in the Fortune Hunters series. I disliked the first one so much that I normally wouldn’t have bothered with the second, but I was snowed in and desperate, so I waded in.
Every year during Mardi Gras season two people in elaborate disguises rob a bank in New Orleans. The press has dubbed the pair the Beaded Bandits, but aside from speculation about their costumes the robberies aren’t getting much attention. The amounts taken by the Bandits have been small and they’ve never hurt anyone, so the case is a low priority for the FBI. The NOPD is so overwhelmed during Mardi Gras that they aren’t able to give the robberies much attention either.
Jeremiah MacNaught is the owner of the bank whose branches are being robbed. He hates thieves, not being in control and being made to look like a fool and he’s determined to stop the robberies even if it means solving the crimes himself. He has one suspect, an employee in one of his banks named Ionessa Dahl. He’s convinced that Ms Dahl is the “inside man”, feeding information to the Bandits to help them plan the robberies. With Mardi Gras season once again in full swing it’s only a matter of time before the Beaded Bandits strike again and Jeremiah decides to go undercover in his own bank to get the proof he needs to have Ms Dahl arrested. His problem is that in person Ionessa Dahl is even more attractive than she seemed in the security videos of the robberies and Mac quickly finds himself loosing his objectivity.
Nessa Dahl has no idea that she’s a robbery suspect. Years ago she made an error on the job that allowed a teller to steal $500, but as far as Nessa knows the only consequence of that mistake is her inability to get promoted. She can’t get work at any other bank in New Orleans and she can’t leave the city, so she simply continues to work hard and hope to someday move up to a better position. She needs the promotion not simply for professional pride, but because she supports her two elderly aunts who raised her after she was orphaned as a child. Money is so tight that they’re had to take in borders and Nessa desperately wants to be able to send them all packing. She believes that the longed-for promotion has finally come through, only to be informed that she’s actually been assigned to act as a go-fer for the insurance investigator who’s in town to work on the case of the Beaded Bandits. She resents the menial work, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to get to know Mac much better.
Like its predecessor, this book had some serious problems with both of the main characters and with the plot. If your name is Jeremiah MacNaught and you want to go undercover in a business that you own it seems to me that you should think of a better fake name than Jeremiah Mac. The fact that no one commented on the similarity between the two names made it seem like the entire bank was staffed by the dimwitted. Still, I could have overlooked Jeremiah’s lack of an original pseudonym. I was also willing to play along with the idea that he was half in love with Nessa after watching her on the security videos of the robberies and fell the rest of the way in love with her after spending only one day with her. I was not willing to believe that he proposed marriage before telling Nessa who he really was and was then surprised that she was furious and broke the engagement when she found out.
I thought breaking the engagement was perfectly reasonable, but I had other issues with Nessa and found her a little hard to take at times. Her constant remarks about how rude Yankees are certainly got old long before the book was finished and in some ways she was perilously close to being a Mary Sue. The main problem being that she seems to know everyone in New Orleans and the only people who don’t love her are evil. Her boss in particular is so broadly drawn that she’s almost a cartoon.
It didn’t help that Nessa never took any effective steps to deal with the evil boss. The book attempts to explain her lack of action by saying that she didn’t have any choice, but I didn’t really buy that. I also found it annoying that everything about Nessa’s home life is either clichéd or overly cute. Her aunts are classic Eccentric Southern Ladies and they have a faithful family retainer in the form of an African American housekeeper who apparently never had any life separate from her employers. The boarders are all “colorful”, and everyone in New Orleans knows the Dahl House and is dying for an invitation to their famous annual Mardi Gras party. (Get it--- Doll House. Dollhouse. How precious.)
The most problematic aspect of the book was the resolution to the case of the Beaded Bandits. To avoid spoilers I’ll just say that I was not charmed by the fact that everyone except Mac was willing to frame a dead man for crimes he did not commit in order to let the real Bandits off the hook. The dead man wasn’t a good guy, but a frame is a frame and that’s really Not OK. Considering the NOPD’s well-publicized problems with corruption it seemed especially poor form to portray the Chief of Police as being in on the frame up.
The subplot about the relationship between the books’ heroes was no more interesting to me in this book than it was in Trouble in High Heels.
In the end I liked this book more than Trouble, but only because I found Mac & Nessa less annoying than Brandi and Roberto and I didn’t feel like Nessa’s mistakes were an insult to professional women everywhere.
Grade: C-
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