Just in time for beach season is “Friends in High Places,” Marne Davis Kellogg’s 10th novel, and the fourth in the “Kick Keswick” series. It’s fun, fast-paced and, OK, it’s frivolous. But the author, a Denver native, has excellent character sketches, unusual plots and enough surprising twists to make you pick it up again.
It’s interesting to juxtapose Denver’s laid-back lifestyle, and casual (some say sloppy) dress code against the highfalutin world that Kick lives in. Just to warm up, you might want to watch “The Devil Wears Prada,” a movie about the world of high fashion. “Friends” is about jewels – real, fake, stupendously huge and ones that people who buy, sell, steal, wear or give away. It is wealth and style on a scale most of us have never seen.
Kick is smiling with contentment as the book opens. She does have to brace herself as her fairly new husband, Scotland Yard inspector emeritus Thomas Curtis, drives his new Porsche like a fool on the way to a party in Provence, where they have decided to “retire.” They discuss her former life as a jewel thief, and Kick idly hopes that nothing catches up with her.
Thomas reassures her it won’t. Kick had run Ballentine and Co., an upscale auction house in London, for many years, and it gave her knowledge of and access to many of the world’s best jewels. Thomas also led a double life as an art thief known as the Samaritan Burglar, because he stole only from the careless, then left them a fussy note to pick up their valuables at the police station. It was a perfect pairing of two people who thrived on the adrenalin rush needed to steal, and despite their protests to the contrary, they don’t seem entirely ready to put it behind them.
Kick’s calm lasts until an overheard remark at the party informs her that Ballentine’s is about to implode. The whispered words “fake jewels” and “settle out of court” give her cold chills. Not only would the discovery bring down a respected business, but it also would expose Kick’s shenanigans.
She would have to come out of retirement and steal back what she had taken before and replace the fake jewels with the ones stashed in her safe boxes in Zurich and Geneva. Thomas is conveniently called away on business, leaving Kick free to rejoin Ballentine’s while the head guy recuperates from some ailments.
The plot gallops apace, with close calls here and there, and bizarre, beastly characters acting in secret and sometimes wicked ways. For all occasions, Kick is always dressed perfectly; she knows just the right things to do and say. And the food!
Kicking back with Kick
Probably the best part of the book is getting to hang out with Kick. Despite the fact that she has raised stealing and lying to an art form, you like her. Born to a mom who “entertained” Oklahoma oil men in her trailer, Kick wanted out of that place and that life. Still, she kept making mistakes – she listened to the line of a football hero and got pregnant, and the resulting baby that she gave away figures into the book’s plot. She then got caught stealing and had to go to reform school, where she conveniently studied jewelry-making. Fast forward a few years, and Kick lands at Ballentine and Co. in London, with the kindly founder as her rich benefactor and teacher.
We meet her when she’s in her late 40s (maybe), and supremely glamorous and confident. Before reaping the benefits of her “career,” and fading into a fancy obscurity, she had focused her life on acquiring mounds of sparkling jewels, knowing she could count on them for security. She has been good at sizing up people (except the studly guy who came along in her middle age – and in the last book – and who returns in disguise here). Sometimes she transforms herself with wigs and such, has several names and identities, orders jets to fly her around, usually accompanied by her doggie Bijou.
While she’s at Ballentine’s figuring out how to set things right, she gets a visit from a young, beautiful nun who needs help.
The nun unwraps a stunning Madonna statue encrusted with emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, and says she wants to sell it to save her order, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. Two men had broken in and stolen the rest of the collection and murdered all the nuns but one. Kick immediately calculates the worth of the statue and tells the nun that she will sell it for them and will – somehow – recover the others. Besides the heartbreaking story, it doesn’t escape Kick’s notice that the woman looks like her, is from America and is the same age as the child she gave up for adoption.
Many story lines converge during a large, complicated wedding, which involves several of Balletine’s clients, and is mired in confusing drama, anger, jealousy, people who are pretending to be monied and those seeking revenge for various wrongs. Kick decides to take it head on and sails in disguise as Lady Amanda Bonham, making each side think she belongs to the family of the other side.
In the middle of this mess, Kick comes up with solutions for the necklace embarrassment, solves the nun’s survival, wraps up a major criminal investigation and even makes some friends for the first time in her life. She has fun, and so do we.
Diane Hartman is a principle in hartmanandbrown.com.
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FICTION
Friends in High Places
Marne Davis Kellogg
$24.95
