Publishers Weekly - Audio
10/03/2016
In the audio edition of this series kickoff by Evanovich and Sutton (coauthors of 2015’s Wicked Charms), actress King animates an intriguing cast of characters, beginning with the comedy thriller’s two uniquely mismatched protagonists. Her Riley Moon, a brilliant and ambitious junior analyst at superbank Blane-Grunwald, is youthful and at turns cautious, curious, and sarcastic, with more than a hint of her small-town Texas origin. Emerson Knight, the handsome, fabulously wealthy, annoyingly eccentric bank client whom Riley is assigned to babysit, speaks with a properly aristocratic, dogmatic belief in his brilliance, faltering only when he is criticized for a lack of social skills. This odd couple is all that stands in the way of the elite, criminally unscrupulous Grunwald family’s attempt to corner the world gold market and destroy all other forms of currency. The brothers sound like members of the same clan, but King adds distinctions for each. To thwart the evil Grunwalds, Knight and Moon embark on a gold hunt from the nation’s capital to the Federal Reserve vaults in Manhattan and eventually to a confrontation at Nevada’s mysterious Area 51. Making the trip as perilous as possible are a variety of deadly diversions, chief among them being Hans’s employee Edward Rollo, an unstoppable sadistic torturer-killer whose soft, satiny threats are not to be ignored. A Bantam hardcover. (Aug.)
Publishers Weekly
07/25/2016
This entertaining series launch from bestseller Evanovich and Sutton, coauthors of 2015's Wicked Charms, introduces Emerson Knight, an eccentric millionaire, and Riley Moon, a junior analyst at mega-bank Blane-Grunwald. Moon is sent by the bank to placate Emerson, who's demanding to, literally, see his gold. But after visiting Emerson at his Washington, D.C., mansion, Mysterioso Manor, she winds up driving Emerson to the bank (in his '93 Bentley Turbo R), where he confronts bank head Werner Grunwald. Other Grunwald family members hold powerful positions: Hans Grunwald runs the National Security Agency, and Manfred Grunwald is about to be sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Emerson wants to find black sheep brother Günter Grunwald, who has disappeared, and Riley joins the hunt. With sly references to pulp hero the Shadow and to the creators of Ellery Queen, the authors send their odd couple on a harrowing journey that leads, with zany humor, from the Federal Reserve gold vaults in Manhattan to top-secret Area 51 in Nevada and a monstrous conspiracy that promises to be only the first for the duo. Agent: Peter Evanovich. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
The one-liners fly at a ferocious pace. . . . Evanovich fans will find this closer in style to the Stephanie Plum novels.”—Booklist
“Evanovich’s comedic timing and pacing are evident on every page.”—Daily Republic
NOVEMBER 2016 - AudioFile
Narrator Lorelei King makes the improbable delightful and the silliness entertaining. Emerson Knight, multimillionaire eccentric with social skills firmly planted on the autism spectrum, wants to remove all his gold reserves from their high-security vaults. He believes someone has been tampering with the gold. Riley Moon, recent Harvard Law graduate, is sent to appease Knight at his Mysterioso Manor. Evanovich and Sutton deliver a shiny product but miss the mark on genuine humor. Nonetheless, King is terrific as put-upon Aunt Myra, who deals with Emerson as well as a zebra, an armadillo, and a monkey, and who saves everyone’s bacon. Watch for the continuing adventures of Knight and Moon, hopefully, delivered by King. This sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-07-04
Nancy Drew meets Goldfinger in this series kickoff from the indefatigable Evanovich and Emmy-winning TV writer Sutton.Riley Moon is low woman on the totem pole at Blane-Grunwald, so she’s the sacrificial victim dispatched to Mysterioso Manor, in Washington, D.C., to persuade its eccentric lord, Emerson Knight, to review his portfolio. Knight—think of an autistic savant played by George Clooney—has other ideas. He demands to withdraw all the gold Blane-Grunwald is holding for him, or at least take a look at it. And the longer he talks, the less crazy the idea sounds, because he presents Riley with more and more compelling evidence that some highly placed forces have schemed to replace vast quantities of the gold bars the nation has locked away in high-security vaults with cunning counterfeits in order to inflate the value of their own unadulterated holdings. The obvious culprits are the family members of underachieving banker Günter Grunwald, missing and increasingly presumed dead after he smelled a rat among his brothers: Gen. Hans Grunwald, who heads the National Security Agency; Judge Manfred Grunwald, recently nominated to the Supreme Court; and Werner Grunwald, head honcho at Blane-Grunwald. But identifying them is a long step short of neutralizing them, especially when they have neutralizing plans of their own. Emmy and Riley—or Knight and Moon, as the series bills them—quickly establish exactly the sort of salt-and-pepper rapport fans of Stephanie Plum’s adventures among male animals (Notorious Nineteen, 2013, etc.) would expect, this time spiced with high-speed, low–IQ action sequences that are a specialty of Sutton’s (Crush, 2015, etc.). What’s missing from the usual Evanovich solo and duet performances is low comedy. Beneath the obligatory trappings of the hero’s non sequiturs and pet armadillo, there’s surprisingly little in this wildly overscaled caper to tickle the funny bone.
