The Money Kill by Katia Lief

Published by Harper on March 26, 2013

The Money Kill is the fourth in a series of novels featuring ex-cop Karin Schaeffer, who is married to ex-cop Seamus "Mac" MacLeary.  Karin and Mac are private detectives in Brooklyn. They need money and, unexpectedly, two cases come along that give them a lift. The wife of a wealthy man in Greenwich, Connecticut hires Mac to find evidence of her husband's affair. Shortly after he takes the case, a large detective agency approaches Mac with an offer to send him to London for a quick bit of investigative work. The offer includes the opportunity to do a house swap in Italy, an inducement that sells Karin on the idea, particularly when their office mate Mary agrees to join them on their family vacation. Mac's "too good to be true" radar should have beeped, but people in need of cash tend to ignore their common sense, so I suppose it's credible that Mac accepts the assignment without question.

As is the convention in thrillers, intrigue in London and Sardinia arises that is related to the intrigue in Greenwich, prompting the reader to guess at what the connection will be. The connection struck me as farfetched, even by thriller standards. It also struck me as odd (given her law enforcement background) that Karin's idea of investigating a crime that threatened her family included drinking wine and reading a Lonely Planet guidebook. At times I had the impression that Katia Lief was drinking wine and consulting Lonely Planet as she wrote the novel. Her colorless descriptions of Sardinia fail to evoke a sense of being present in a foreign land.

As the novel enters its second half, unlikely events continue to mount. Without spoiling any plot developments, I'll just say that a person who clearly could not have committed a crime is charged with the crime for no reason other than to advance the plot. Making that happen requires the conspiracy to move in increasingly improbable directions, with no explanation of the benefit the conspirators gain from their participation. Someone obtains information about Mac's investigation and takes action to thwart it with no explanation of the information's discovery, beyond the vague speculation that "people in high places" must be in on the coverup. The conspiracy that eventually unfolds, involving a number of (mostly unidentified) public officials in two countries, isn't as pervasive (or as carefully detailed) as a Ludlum conspiracy, but it is sufficiently vast to stretch the boundaries of credibility. Still, I'm willing to swallow my doubt for the sake of a good story, and this story is at least passably good.

Point of view frequently shifts between Mac and Karin. While this tends to cause momentary confusion (their narrative voices are not distinctive), it also highlights the gender-based differences in the way those characters react to each other, to their situation, and to the people around them. Mac, Karin, and Mary bring an international cast of children to the novel, but they add little of interest to the story despite the central role they play in it. Given their underdeveloped personalities, they seem more like literary decorations than actual children.

Lief's writing style is competent, although a number of characters engage in banal chatter that comes across as filler. The story has the elements of a good thriller but it lacks pizzazz. The excitement factor is muted. Apart from one innovative scene involving Mac and a later scene involving Mary, I never had the sense that any character I cared about was truly at risk. Still, Lief develops a modest level of tension as the novel winds to its conclusion. The Money Kill isn't as absorbing as I would like a thriller to be, but it's a quick read and the last chapters add a couple of surprise twists that redeem the novel by bringing the story to a satisfying and unexpected conclusion.

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