Curious Minds

October 3, 2016
In the audio edition of this series kickoff by Evanovich and Sutton (coauthors of 2015’s Wicked Charms), actress King animates an intriguing cast of characters, beginning with the comedy thriller’s two uniquely mismatched protagonists. Her Riley Moon, a brilliant and ambitious junior analyst at superbank Blane-Grunwald, is youthful and at turns cautious, curious, and sarcastic, with more than a hint of her small-town Texas origin. Emerson Knight, the handsome, fabulously wealthy, annoyingly eccentric bank client whom Riley is assigned to babysit, speaks with a properly aristocratic, dogmatic belief in his brilliance, faltering only when he is criticized for a lack of social skills. This odd couple is all that stands in the way of the elite, criminally unscrupulous Grunwald family’s attempt to corner the world gold market and destroy all other forms of currency. The brothers sound like members of the same clan, but King adds distinctions for each. To thwart the evil Grunwalds, Knight and Moon embark on a gold hunt from the nation’s capital to the Federal Reserve vaults in Manhattan and eventually to a confrontation at Nevada’s mysterious Area 51. Making the trip as perilous as possible are a variety of deadly diversions, chief among them being Hans’s employee Edward Rollo, an unstoppable sadistic torturer-killer whose soft, satiny threats are not to be ignored. A Bantam hardcover.

Narrator Lorelei King makes the improbable delightful and the silliness entertaining. Emerson Knight, multimillionaire eccentric with social skills firmly planted on the autism spectrum, wants to remove all his gold reserves from their high-security vaults. He believes someone has been tampering with the gold. Riley Moon, recent Harvard Law graduate, is sent to appease Knight at his Mysterioso Manor. Evanovich and Sutton deliver a shiny product but miss the mark on genuine humor. Nonetheless, King is terrific as put-upon Aunt Myra, who deals with Emerson as well as a zebra, an armadillo, and a monkey, and who saves everyone's bacon. Watch for the continuing adventures of Knight and Moon, hopefully, delivered by King. This sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship. S.J.H. � AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine