Partners In Crime - Anne Stuart

Jane Dexter wants to hire an arsonist and mistakens Sandi Caldicott,a lawyer, for one of his clients. Sandi is in need of some adventure and pretends to be a criminal. What follows is a romantic suspense plot involving secret inventions whose plans are going to be sold to foreign countries and be used with less than peaceful intentions and Jane and Sandi are going to try and avoid that.

To avoid the selling of the plans, her late brother's invention, Jane needs to set his laboratory on fire since she doesn't know where the plans are but they must surely be there. But soon they find that her uncle might have been her brother's killer and may be after the plans himself.

It's another pleasurable read, Jane and Sandi are interesting characters. Jane starts off a bit too shy, sensible and plain but she slowly evolves under Sandi's influence and provocations. It's a case of opposites attract between a self-effacing librarian and a big shot high society lawyer. The attraction is sooner recognised by Sandi than Jane, even after she finds the truth about him. The book is especially funny while Jane doesn't know about the identity mistake and there's a scene where they visit a crime lord in which Sandi pretends to be his client and his client pretends to be him and it's obvious that Jane is the only one that doesn't have a clue that was really hilarious! By the way Sandi is short for Alexander, in the beginning I was a bit puzzled as I'm more used to Sandi being a female name.

In the end - that comes about with some interesting plot twists and a really disappointing villain (or maybe just a not so villanous one) - she is ready to truly be his Partner In Crime and give him a hard time in the process. I thought the wrap up in the end could have been a bit better, Stuart comes up with some surprising events but somehow we have no real suspense, the tension is just not there.

Grade: B-