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CRIME/SUSPENSE/
CAPER MYSTERY
BRILLIANT
Meet Kick Keswick, an elegant and self-possessed American who has been at London's venerable Ballantine & Company Auctioneers for over thirty years. She is an expert on paintings, furniture, and objets d'art, and so far has lived a perfectly happy life with things on her mind other than love. In fact, Kick rarely lets anyone into her private world. She prefers it that way. She adores her elegant, cozy London flat, her books, her music, her delicious meals, and her jewels. Kick doesn’t need a man in her life, messing things up. But when American industrialist, scoundrel and womanizer Owen Brace grabs the faltering
Ballantine & Company in a corporate takeover, he turns Kick's world upside down, opening her eyes to large-scale love, romance, and sensuous pleasure.

But something tells Kick that Brace's motives are anything but sincere. And when he gets near enough to threaten Kick's closely guarded life, Brace learns the dangers of underestimating this woman. From sophisticated London to cozy Provence, France, Brilliant is a playfully delicious novel of suspense, masterful revenge, and secrets (the multi-faceted kind).
Read A Review:

When I picked up this novel to read, I thought I was reading the next segment in her Lilly Bennett series.  I soon realized that it wasn't, but I soon fell in love with Kick Keswick. 

Kick is the Executive Assistant at Ballantine and Company Auctioneers in England.  But, she is also a jewel thief.  She has learned so much about jewels that she now constructs fakes and expertly slips the real jewels into her pocket and puts the fakes in the Auction company safes.  She also burglarizes home and steals only jewelry and leaves a bouquet of shamrocks.  She has become the Shamrock Burglar.  No one knows about this side of her life.   

There's a lot no one knows about her life.  She grew up in Oklahoma and had a bad childhood, though this isn't the story she tells of her childhood.  Sir Cramner Ballantine found her and helped her turn her life around.  She learned everything there was to learn about the items being auctioned.  Before Sir Cramner died, he gave Kick a 15% interest in the company as KDK Trust.  No one else knew about this but his lawyer. 

Sir Cramner had asked her to keep an eye on his son Sir Benjamin as he took over Ballantine and Company and to not let him run it into the ground.  This task about did Kick in.  Now Ballantine and Company has merged with Brace International.  Owen Brace takes when Sir Benjamin kills himself.  Kick has her work cut out for her to help Owen gain the appearance and respect worthy of Ballantine and Company. 

The undercurrent of her being a jewel thief working in an upscale business constantly kept this story moving.  I found myself picking this book up to read to find out what happened next.  It isn't your standard mystery by any means, but I truly enjoyed it and look forward to reading about more adventures with Kick. 

The England scenery and the upper class auction business gave the story a lot of credibility and gave me a look into a lifestyle I am totally unaware of.  I got a good education but in a very enjoyable manner. 

I highly recommend this book.

Dawn Dowdle