Review by Booklist Review
Originally serialized in the Boston Globe under the title The Mechanic, Mezrich's first novel since 2014's Seven Wonders brings together a gambler, an ex-con, and a professor of American history to expose a dark secret buried in the country's past. While they're at it, they might just solve a 30-year-old mystery: the 1990 theft of several pieces of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Mezrich, who's best known as a writer of nonfiction (including The Accidental Billionaires), brings his high-energy, informal writing style to a story that seamlessly blends fiction and nonfiction. It's easy to forget just how talented a novelist he is, what with his string of nonfiction bestsellers, but he published six novels before his first full-length work of nonfiction, and they're pretty darned good. This one may very well be his best novel, since it features two things, gambling and heists, about which he has written extensively. Highly recommended for fans of the author's early novels and, of course, his nonfiction.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The suspenseful opening of this uneven thriller from bestseller Mezrich (Seven Wonders) finds a mysterious young woman, MIT applied math PhD student Hailey Gordon, in a Boston casino, where she's card-counting in hopes of winning enough at blackjack to help pay her tuition and rent bills. But once security notices what she's doing, Hailey flees into the adjoining hotel, where she hides in a room in which she stumbles on a man with a bullet hole in his head. Moments later, ex-con Nick Patterson enters the room. Nick was hoping to meet a fence there about a lead he recently came across to the 30-year-old unsolved theft of multimillion-dollar paintings from the Gardner Art Museum. The pair end up allying with Prof. Adrian Jensen, an expert on Paul Revere, who has obtained a copy of a paper from a colleague purporting to announce a world-changing discovery. Mezrich doesn't flesh out his characters, and the reveal about the professor's discovery doesn't pass the giggle test. With any luck, the intriguing Hailey will return in a sequel with a more convincing plot. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Nonfiction writer Mezrich's (Bitcoin Billionaires) heart-pounding debut thriller is based on the 1990 heist at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, with a National Treasure twist. When MIT student and mathematical genius Hailey Gordon is caught card-counting, she grabs her winnings and runs. While trying to hide from hotel security, she finds a room door ajar and its occupant dead. Ex-con Nick Patterson has inherited--okay, stolen--a heist job from a now-dead fellow inmate. Hoping to go straight after this theft, Nick enters his fence's hotel room to find him dead and a scared Hailey standing over the body. Meanwhile, history professor and Paul Revere expert Adrian Jensen receives a surprise delivery from his colleague and intellectual nemesis, Charles Walker, less than 24 hours before Charles meets his demise. Charles's discovery throws Hailey, Nick, and Adrian together into the most dangerous adventure of their lives--one that will change their lives or get them killed. VERDICT Fans of alternative history thrillers will enjoy this recommended adventure novel, which is already optioned for film.--Carmen Clark
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Mezrich, best known as a true-crime author, turns to fiction with this history-based thriller. The novel begins with a prologue that recounts the notorious (and still unsolved) real-life theft of 13 artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, then jumps to the present. Math genius Hailey Gordon is paying her way through graduate school at MIT by gambling at the casinos, and she's just been spotted counting cards. Fleeing casino security, she dodges through an open hotel room door--and finds a dead man. Right behind her is Nick Patterson, an ex-convict who's there to meet the now-deceased Jimmy the Lip, who was supposed to be his connection to the deal of a lifetime--one connected to the Gardner heist. Hailey's and Nick's mutual desire to elude the cops quickly turns into a partnership to find the real object of the Gardner theft--which wasn't any of the priceless paintings but an object, as the title suggests, connected to Paul Revere. They're joined (grudgingly) in the hunt by Adrian Jensen, an enormously snobby history professor who's been propelled into a related quest by the murder of a despised colleague. In the mode of the history-based, conspiracy-fed thriller à la Dan Brown, their race around Boston's historic landmarks takes place in just a day. But it feels like much longer. Thrillers like this one are grounded in research, but in this book the research is dropped in giant blocks that leave the action in park for pages at a time. At one critical point, when a character is about to fire a gun, the action is interrupted by almost 300 words on how to load a flintlock pistol--a disquisition that does nothing for the plot but bring it to a screeching halt. When the action does struggle to the surface, it's increasingly confusing and often improbable. A conspiracy-driven thriller stalls out on too little action and a dissertation's worth of research. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
