Kick Keswick fills her days and nights enjoying the finer things in life: costly bottles of wine, chocolate soufflés, top-notch fashion and a lust for the best that money can buy. Like the fine diamonds she adores, her life is multifaceted. Having retired from being a professional jewel thief at night and detective by day, she is trying to enjoy her new life as wife and retiree when she gets lured back with an offer she can’t refuse.
As with her previous novels with the same heroine, “Brilliant” and “Priceless,” Denver native Marne Davis Kellogg delights us with an atypical heroine. Instead of being a skinny, sexy, woe-is-me girly-girl detective, Kick Keswick is a combination of Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich’s heroine) and Tawanda of “Fried Green Tomatoes” fame. She is 40-
something, full-figured and proud of it. Her theory is that life is worth living fully: “You might be the next in line to leave the planet – wouldn’t you hate to do that having had just celery, carrot sticks, and a yogurt for lunch?”
Kick is also independent and never needs to be rescued by a man. There will be no half-dressed, muscle-bound hunks saving her. In fact, it is more likely for her to have to save a man. She is newly married and obviously in love, but it’s nice to see a heroine who isn’t smitten with some male hero: “I’d never had a knight in shining armor before and didn’t need one now.” She has other things on her mind – jewelry, food, her career and these things come before emotional gibberish.
She met her husband when she was a jewel thief and he the Scotland Yard detective who couldn’t catch her. Both had been Robin Hood thieves – she stealing jewels from the undeserving rich and he taking art from unfit collectors. They realized each other’s secret career but never really brought it up. They left their careers behind so they could retire and set up house in Provence, France, and both left the past alone.
Determined to remain retired and content with spending their days drinking wine and enjoying their chateau, the couple live undisturbed until the queen of England’s precious jewels come up missing and Kick is suddenly called back into service. Wanting to live a quiet life and retire for good, she hesitates to take the case, but with her husband’s persuasion and the flattery of working for the queen, she can’t pass up the thrill of the case. This case would require her not only to be detective, but also a thief – double bliss!
Kick must work with all secrecy and alone, as is her way, so she aborts her husband’s well-laid plan, much to his dismay, and goes underground among Europe’s rich and famous to suss out the thief. For her, the hunt is the thrill.
As we join her on her task, we enjoy her lifestyle as much as she enjoys stealing jewels. We follow Kick through the winter wonderland of Zurich and sample vicariously the luxurious life of the ritziest resorts and spas and the finest of foods.
It often seems like Kick isn’t doing any detective work and is only enjoying the fine life, but we are more than willing to overlook the distraction. Kellogg’s writing is much like her heroine’s voracious appetite. She’ll spend a page describing the way to make a perfect soufflé or devil’s food cake, ingredient by ingredient. Later, she’ll spend a good paragraph or two describing the pleasure of a perfect cheese puff and segue into the favorable aspects of chiffon fabric. Her focus tends be on the luxurious food, clothing and jewels of the heroine and less on the mystery at hand, but it works. It is all part of a well-developed and charismatic character. Kick is why we are reading the novel and the mystery at hand is really the sideshow.
Kellogg is a master at detective novels. With this addition to her Kick Keswick series, “Perfect” is just that.
Renée Warner is a freelance writer in Atlanta.
