To Catch a Spy
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"A worthy sequel to the classic." — Harlan Coben
Estate approved sequel to the novel To Catch a Thief by David Dodge and 1955 Academy Award-winning film by Alfred Hitchcock
It’s been a year since John Robie, notorious Riviera jewel thief, proved his innocence by catching a copycat burglar. And it’s been a year since John has seen Francie Stevens, the adventurous socialite who not only saw through his disguise, but helped him catch the copycat. Now Francie is returning to the Riviera for its first-ever Fashion Week as a model for a top French designer, and John plans on rekindling their romance. But there’s a problem. While helping a friend, John chases down a mysterious courier, whose ruthless associates now want John dead. To make matters worse, when Francie arrives, she has a boyfriend in tow, and tells John that she wants nothing to do with him.
John has to figure out why he’s a hunted man, and why Francie is acting suspiciously. Digging deeper, he discovers a spy ring with evil intent. As John works unofficially to gather evidence, a question begins to haunt him—could Francie Stevens be a spy? With his enemies closing in, John turns to his cat burglar skills to try to save his life and expose the traitors. To survive, he has to catch the spies before they catch—and kill—a retired thief!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
ONeill debuts with an affable if undercooked sequel to David Dodge's To Catch a Thief. In 1955, retired jewel thief John Robie sneaks into a Cannes hotel room and steals information from a mysterious courier as a favor for a French counterespionage agency. The surprised courier jumps to his death to avoid being taken in for questioning, setting in motion a complex, borderline-incoherent plot that puts Robie in grave danger. What Robie really wants, however, is to rekindle his relationship with socialite and model Francie Stevens, who has returned to Cannes for a fashion show. Meanwhile, local police commissioner Lepic still hopes to arrest Robie after being outwitted in the previous novel. ONeill harbors a clear love for the source material, and he renders 1950s Cannes in painstaking detail, but the narrative's uneasy mash-up of labyrinthine spy thriller and fizzy romance never really gels. Devoted fans of the original novel or its film adaptation might enjoy themselves, but others will lose interest long before the end.
