The Bounty by Janet Evanovich with Steve Hamilton: Fox and O’Hare are on the Hunt for Nazi Gold

The Bounty by Janet Evanovich with Steve Hamilton Fox and O’Hare, #7 Hardcover, 305 pg. Atria Books, 2021 Read: May 26-28, 2021 Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

“Yeah, it’s a pickle, all right,” Jake said. “We used to call missions like this one-percenters.”

“Meaning one percent chance of success?” Quentin asked. “I’ve been on a few of those myself.”

Jake smiled. “I’m not being trying to be pessimistic. As a matter of fact, one-percenters are usually the most fun. There’s no pressure when you’re trying to do the impossible.”

What’s The Bounty About?

The day has gotten away from me, so I’m not going to come up with my own synopsis for this one, but I’ll borrow the description from Evanovich’s site so I can get a little shut-eye:

Straight as an arrow special agent Kate O’Hare and international con man Nick Fox have brought down some of the biggest criminals out there. But now they face their most dangerous foe yet—a vast, shadowy international organization known only as the Brotherhood.
Directly descended from the Vatican Bank priests who served Hitler during World War II, the Brotherhood is on a frantic search for a lost train loaded with $30 billion in Nazi gold, untouched for over seventy-five years somewhere in the mountains of Eastern Europe.
Kate and Nick know that there is only one man who can find the fortune and bring down the Brotherhood—the same man who taught Nick everything he knows—his father, Quentin. As the stakes get higher, they must also rely on Kate’s own father, Jake, who shares his daughter’s grit and stubbornness. Too bad they can never agree on anything.
From a remote monastery in the Swiss Alps to the lawless desert of the Western Sahara, Kate, Nick, and the two men who made them who they are today must crisscross the world in a desperate scramble to stop their deadliest foe in the biggest adventure of their lives.

The State of the Series

Books 1-5 (co-written by Lee Goldberg) were comedic heist/con adventures, with a goofy (slightly over-the-top) supporting cast—that were just so fun to read. The sixth book (co-written by Peter Evanovich) tried to match that and just failed.

Now, Steve Hamilton has stepped into the co-writer spot and the series has shifted a bit. The Bounty is more of a straightforward thriller—sure, it’s lighter than most thrillers, but it’s not a comedy. Almost all of the supporting cast is absent, we only get Kate’s father, Jake (frequently the best part of the early books) with Nick’s father, Quentin, being introduced. Quentin isn’t goofy at all, he’s not over-the-top, but he’s a fun character. Nick’s sleight-of-hand antics and thievery are on display—but we don’t get any hint of a con job. I missed that.

I don’t know if Book 8 will get back to the early roots (my preference) or if it’ll keep going in this path. But at the very least, I can look forward to the next book again, something I feared wouldn’t happen again.

There’s a parallel to this and my mini-rant about the cover designs from a couple of weeks ago. Which you might want to give a read if you didn’t see that.

So, what did I think about The Bounty?

This was a make-or-break entry in the series for me, if I didn’t enjoy this one, I was going to walk away from these. But Evanovich and Hamilton have reassured me. This is just so much better than the disaster that was The Big Kahuna that I’m willing to embrace (at least temporarily) this new style. I hope it continues.

If you like light thrillers with a semi-Indiana Jones feel, with a dash of flirtation between the leads thrown in, you should give this a try. The first five books in the series are better, but this is a good entry point.