AAR has reviewed over ninety-two books by Nora Roberts and given most of them high grades. Nightwork is my first time reviewing her in about ten years and I was surprised by how comfortable and familiar her work still feels. 

Harry Booth started stealing when he was a child. His aunt Mags taught him pick-pocketing for fun – as one does with elementary-aged children – and his nimble hands had proved to be magical enough to help keep the debt collectors at bay while his mom fought cancer. Over the next nine years, as his mom goes through remissions and recurrences, Harry refines his skills to include lock picking, safe cracking, and house breaking. He doesn’t resent the rich for their wealth – he just feels entitled to his small share of it. Harry does a fine job of juggling school, working for his mom’s cleaning company, having friends and doing what he calls his “nightwork”. When he is eighteen, his mother loses her fight with the big C, and Harry leaves Chicago, heading south towards warmer climes. It would be easy for him to leave his criminal past behind him, too, but the college scholarships he’s offered and the money he makes from selling the family home don’t hold enough appeal to pull him back to the straight and narrow. Harry likes thieving, he’s good at it and he has no intention of giving it up.  

The first third of the novel is all about Harry. It covers his early years as he refines his craft during his mom’s illness, then follows him as he wanders about the south and hones those skills even more as he dons various identities. At the thirty percent mark Harry first lays eyes on  Miranda Emerson, our heroine. He’s powerfully attracted to her, but given what he does for a living, he knows it’s important he keep a low profile and avoid connections with nice gals like Miranda . But of course he doesn’t, and the two go on four apparently magical dates. I didn’t feel there was anything special about these encounters, but clearly they’re super special because by the end of a weekend together Harry and Miranda are IN LOVE, all caps. Like really, really special to each other. 

Then Carter LaPorte, a bad, scary man Harry – or whatever the hell he is calling himself at the moment – worked for in the past finds Harry, threatens his Aunt Mags as well as his new friends, and Harry has to leave town to do a large, potentially hazardous heist for the guy. He cuts all current ties – including Miranda (for her own sake) – does the job, and then does his very best to disappear in a manner which will keep LaPorte from finding him ever again. Harry doesn’t see  Miranda  for over a decade and of course, doesn’t fall in love again. Then fate contrives to bring them together – but when they meet Harry has a new persona and as a result, quite a bit of explaining to do. Surprisingly, (or maybe not given that the author is a renowned romance writer) Miranda accepts Harry’s macabre tale of being a gentlemen thief and they both realize what they felt in the less than a month they knew each other in the past is as potent now as it was then. But being with Miranda has made Harry the tiniest bit sloppy and that is all LaPorte needs to find him. He wants Harry to pull one more job for him – or LaPorte  will bring Harry’s new life crumbling down around his ears.  

Over the years I’ve heard many people critique Robert’s writing style as choppy and inelegant, but I admit I find it very easy to read. In this narrative, the prose is clear and crisp, the pacing keeps us moving briskly through the story and I like the fact that Roberts leaves it all on the page. You don’t have to think through much of anything – the author lays it all out and explains every last detail. The characters are well drawn, if simplistic. They lack a lot of the nuances, messiness and complications of real human beings, but the reader gets a strong sense of who they are in terms of personality and nature. The descriptions of locations and cuisine – especially the cuisine – are beautifully done.  

If you’re a Roberts fan, you will probably enjoy this novel. It hits all her trademarks with the feisty, intelligent heroine; Roarke (from her alter-ego’s In Death books) style hero and crystal toting/tarot reading sidekicks.  

I struggled with several factors in the story, however. One is that the characters don’t act their age – they come across as fifties-plus even when they’re in their twenties. Especially noticeable is how little they use their cellphones and that they often call rather than texting. The clothes and conversations are also wrong for people who age from twenty to thirty during the timeframe of the story. 

I alluded above to not feeling the love between Harry and Miranda, and that lasted throughout the novel. There is just nothing in the narrative that convinced me Miranda and Harry  were made for each other – it’s all insta-love and I didn’t buy that.  Especially with Harry, who had met several other far more amazing women.  

Which brings me to my main problem with the book – I didn’t like Harry. It is mentioned many times that he can do dang near anything – he speaks six or so languages fluently, has an eidetic memory, is an amazing cook, etc. etc. Yet he thieves because he enjoys it and I found that distasteful. It is one thing to steal from need, quite another to steal for pleasure and profit. And profit he does – he’s quite wealthy by the end of the story.  

I also found him profoundly selfish. He’s not a Robin Hood-style thief and if he ever did anything for universal healthcare or cancer research, I blinked and missed it. That – to me – was a major writing flaw; if you are going to make something central to the plot, like a parent’s battle with cancer driving you off the straight and narrow, then have the character deal with it in more than just a ‘I’m sad my mom died’ way. In this day and age of over-politicization of just about everything, it is refreshing to read books that don’t sermonize on social issues – but not if those books are supposed to deal with social issues. People going broke to take care of their health is a hot civic topic right now and if an author is going to include it in their work, they need to include how the characters feel about the politics surrounding it and what they are doing to help resolve said issue.  

Overall, I found Nightwork easy to read but not overly enjoyable. If this had been my first book by this author it would likely have also been my last. I’m sure Roberts fans will enjoy it but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone outside that rather large crowd.  

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible or your local independent retailer 

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