A Talent for Trickery

September 14, 2015
Opening a series set in Victorian England, Johnson (Destined to Last) displays her talent for depicting families whose relationships balance antagonistic frustration and well-meaning warmth. Viscount Owen Renderwell, once one of Scotland Yard’s greatest thief-takers, arrives at the secret home of Charlotte “Lottie” Walker, whose father, Walter, was a thief turned informant who recently died. Owen hopes to search Walter’s journals for clues to encrypted letters found where a London madam was murdered, but needs the support of his old crush Lottie. She hates Owen for his role in her father’s death, and she wishes to hide her family’s criminal past from her younger brother, Peter, as well as keeping the details of her own involvement from Owen. Night work on secret codes brings Lottie and Owen enticingly close, but a stalker in the woods leads Owen to dedicate himself to catching the criminal, while young Peter is determined to take on a man’s protective role. The romantic thread is never lost, though it sometimes takes a backseat to plot, and the leads’ blend of cleverness and stubbornness makes their push-pull dynamic a joy. Agent: Emmanuelle Morgen, Stonesong.

September 1, 2015
A viscount investigating a murder for the crown is reunited with the beautiful daughter of a criminal he nabbed several years before. Johnson (A Christmas Dance, 2014, etc.) returns with the first book in her new Victorian-era Thief Takers series. Owen Renderwell was awarded a viscountcy for service to the crown, but now he's in a quandary. A string of robberies culminating with a murder is leading him back to an old investigation. William Walker, notorious swindler and thief, often used codes and ciphers to communicate with his colleagues. Similar codes are showing up in letters left at this latest series of crime scenes, but Walker died 8 years ago, and his daughter Charlotte, now living under an assumed name with her younger sister and brother, hasn't forgiven Owen for her father's death. Owen needs Lottie's help to crack the code before the killer strikes again. But when he and his men visit Lottie in the country, they realize they've led the criminal right to the Walker children, which may have been the killer's intent all along. While Charlotte and Owen work to decipher the letters using William Walker's old journals, someone besieges the house by setting fire to the barn and firing a gun through the window. Lottie and Owen must learn to trust each other amid a decade's worth of lies and deception, and Lottie must face the fact that her 14-year-old brother is growing up and is not going to believe her whitewashed version of their family history forever. The author manages to surprise the reader time and again, making this a successful mystery novel, but the romance itself is rather humdrum and predictable. This is worth a read because of the twists in the criminal investigation, in spite of a not-so-scintillating love story.

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November 1, 2015
Everything about Charlotte Bales is a lie, beginning with the fact that Charlotte Bales is actually Lottie Walker, the daughter of one of London's most notorious thieves and swindlers. However, during the last few years of his life, William Walker chose to use his considerable larcenous talents for good by helping Owen Renderwell, the Gentleman Thief Taker, solve some of Scotland Yard's trickiest cases. Now, eight years after Walker's death, Owen suddenly shows up requesting Lottie's help in going through her late father's coded journals in the hope that they might help Owen solve a recent murder case. Lottie knows that by agreeing to spend time with Owen she is gambling with her family's newly respectable future, but what Lottie doesn't realize is that the greatest thing she is risking with Owen is her heart. Johnson (Nearly a Lady, 2011) begins her new Victorian-set Thief Takers series with a bang with a richly nuanced cast of characters whom Dickens himself might envy, and an expertly crafted mystery sweetened with just the right amount of passion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)