Reviewed by Valerie

TITLE: The Mastermind

SERIES: The Long Con Adventures #1

AUTHOR: Amy Lane

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 266 pages

RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2021

BLURB:

Once upon a time in Rome, Felix Salinger got caught picking his first pocket and Danny Mitchell saved his bacon. The two of them were inseparable… until they weren’t.

Twenty years after that first meeting, Danny returns to Chicago, the city he shared with Felix and their perfect, secret family, to save him again. Felix’s news network—the business that broke them apart—is under fire from an unscrupulous employee pointing the finger at Felix. An official investigation could topple their house of cards. The only way to prove Felix is innocent is to pull off their biggest con yet.

But though Felix still has the gift of grift, his reunion with Danny is bittersweet. Their ten-year separation left holes in their hearts that no amount of stolen property can fill. A green crew of young thieves looks to them for guidance as they negotiate old jewels and new threats to pull off the perfect heist—but the hardest job is proving that love is the only thing of value they’ve ever had.

REVIEW:

Is there a reverse of a book hangover? A hesitation to start a book because you already don’t want it to end? That was Amy Lane’s The Mastermind for me, a masterful second-chance novel I couldn’t set aside. The story is richly layered with flashbacks of Felix and Danny’s time as teenagers grifting in Rome, mingled with the present day and its highly complex relationships, delightful heists, an outstanding romance between Felix and Danny, and their decades-long con.

Danny – the eponymous mastermind behind the cons – is a nineteen-year-old American surviving off scamming the tourists in Rome, when he spots Felix and his bright red scarf fleeing an angry man. Danny recognizes a kindred spirit and soon they’re grifting together and sharing a bed. They meet the pregnant Julia who is lost, alone and hopeless, a virtual prisoner of her manipulative father. And thus, Danny’s most sophisticated and elaborate con – which lasts well over a decade – begins to take shape.

Danny and Felix grew into men with enormous hearts as they provided Julia’s son – “their” son – Josh with the security, love, and kindness they never had themselves. And they delighted in teaching Josh all of their knavish ways. But Danny needed more from Felix than he could provide given the parameters of the con they were executing on Julia’s father, so after ten years together, he made the agonizing decision to leave Felix and the family they had created. And Felix let him walk away.

In the present, Felix is facing potentially career-ending accusations from an employee out to topple him from his media empire. Danny returns to the love of his life to protect him. The ensuing Machiavellian scheme follows an Ocean’s Eleven formula with all the excitement and amusement the movie provides. Danny’s need to maintain “an established pattern of unethical behavior” results in the intricate planning of roles not only for himself, Felix, Julia, and Josh, but for the highly entertaining and dubiously skilled friends of Josh’s that he pulls together to assist. As the team works together to manipulate their mark, the exchange of banter and barbs alleviate the rising tension. The denouement is somewhat corny (is it corny to say corny?) but who cares?

On a personal level, Danny grapples with whether he can resume a relationship with Felix without breaking his own heart. He desires Felix extraordinarily and is like a lost child, his ability to resist Felix gone. When they reconnect intimately, my heart thudded mercilessly. Following a scare when one of their lives is imperiled, the love and passion between them takes center stage and explodes. Felix conveys his emotions to Danny through their lovemaking: I’m not letting you leave again. I’m not letting go. This is the moment that makes The Mastermind glorious.

There’s something very special about Felix and Danny’s relationship throughout their twenty years off and on, but particularly as portrayed in the present. Really, though, it’s all the relationships that elevate the story: Felix and Danny with Julia, past and present; Felix and Julia; all three as co-parents to Josh; and the interplay among Josh’s cadre of thieving friends – Grace, Chuck, Hunter, Molly, and Stirling – and the parental roles Danny and Felix adopt toward them. Every character is complex and well-developed. All of the above dynamics blend together to comprise the epitome of a chosen family, which is one of the strongest themes developed in the book.

My heart ached terribly early in the book, mostly for Danny who withstood the worst, but also for Felix, Julia, and Josh who all suffered from the repercussions of their situation. As a reader, I expected the pain to be more intolerable but I got through it without the angst completely slaying me.

The book ends with a very satisfying HEA and plenty of room for more exploits, escapades, adventures, and love ahead. I could read an entire series focusing just on Felix and Danny. A villain in Danny’s past will surely resurface in a distressingly dark story line. Josh and his four male friends are all gay – as are one or two other side characters – so there are unlimited possibilities for romance that could sustain the series for many years. And stealing from the bad guys à la Robin Hood will never grow old. Until the next edition of the Long Con Adventures, The Mastermind is the kind of book that can be re-read multiple times to absorb every nuance between Felix and Danny, the quick moving sleight of hand maneuvers, and the painstakingly planned cons. Above all, it’s the characters that make the novel worthy of your reading time.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon

Dreamspinner Press