It All Began in Monte Carlo

by Elizabeth Adler Narrated by Susan Boyce

Overview

Sunny Alvarez and Mac Reilly always seem to find trouble in the south of France. This time, all the trouble began in Monte Carlo. Sunny's relationship with Mac is in jeopardy, and Monte Carlo beckons. Soon Sunny is pulled into a web of intrigue involving a series of robberies of high-end jewelry stores. Then there is her wanna-be new friend, who turns out to be a sociopath involved in the sale of sex and in blackmail. Plus there's Sunny's old friend, movie star Allie Ray, who owns a vineyard in France and who comes to help sort Sunny out, while at the same time sorting out the life and appearance of her old friend, Pru Holster, with a makeover that not only changes her dowdy overweight appearance but changes Pru into an amateur detective. If Sunny doesn't untangle this plot, she might end up an unwitting accomplice to theft, blackmail, and even murder. When Mac shows up, he's ready to do anything to get Sunny back, not the least of which is to solve the crimes and save her life.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

At the start of Adler’s bubbly thriller, the follow-up to There’s Something About St. Tropez, Sunny Alvarez boards a Christmas Eve flight from L.A. to Paris, along with her pet Chihuahua, angry that her fiancé, PI Mac Reilly of TV’s Mac Reilly’s Malibu Mysteries, has once again postponed their wedding. On the plane, Sunny meets Eddie Johanssen (aka “Prince Charming”), who suggests another destination: Monte Carlo’s Grand Hotel. After arriving alone in Monte Carlo, Sunny improbably befriends an aging Lithuanian prostitute, Kitty Ratte, who hangs out in the Grand Hotel bar—and turns out to be a psychopath. Sunny is thrilled when both Eddie and Mac show up, but the jealous Kitty soon creates trouble. Mac ends up investigating a series of jewelry store heists, while clueless Sunny, in another unlikely twist, takes a jewelry courier job for an enigmatic Indian woman. The gorgeous locale and Sunny and Mac’s romantic give-and-take more than compensate for the less than credible plot. (July)

From the Publisher

As bright and breezy as a sun-drenched Riviera beach, Adler's taut romantic mystery thrums with palpable tension.” —Booklist

“Lush surroundings, heady shopping sprees, and over-the-top romance makes It All Began in Monte Carlo a summer treat.” —People magazine

Kirkus Reviews

Another frothy adventure in the South of France, Adler's follow-up to There's Something About St. Tropez (2009). In this third of a series begun with Those Malibu Nights (2008), reality-TV detective Mac Reilly and his perennial fiancee, sleek Latina stunner Sunny Alvarez, return. In a huge hissy after Mac postpones their nuptials yet again, Sunny boards a Christmas Eve flight from Los Angeles to Paris with her cranky Chihuahua. In first class, she encounters Eddie, a handsome CEO who sympathizes with her distress, and recommends, instead of frigid Paris, Monte Carlo-he even books her hotel room from his laptop. (He'll later follow her there.) In Monte Carlo, Sunny is spotted by superannuated (and aptly-named) Baltic Eurotrash predator Kitty Ratte. Kitty, constantly looking to exploit the vulnerabilities of the young, rich and beautiful to salve her own bitterness at being none of the above, almost befriends Sunny before being shortstopped by Sunny's movie-star BFF, Allie. While the women await Mac's contrite appearance, a crime spree is in progress: In Paris and Monte Carlo, ritzy jewelry emporiums specializing in rare diamonds have been ripped off in spectacular heists. Each time, one robber targeted the youngest and prettiest store employee. The assailant pistol-whipped her Parisian victim, shattering her cheekbone. In Monte Carlo, a young mother died after being shot in the face. Upon arriving in France, Mac is drawn into the robbery-murder investigation. Kitty finds her mark in Eddie and somehow ensnares him in a laughably inept blackmail scheme. Maha, gorgeous Indian slum-dweller turned world-renowned jewelry designer, recruits Sunny (she's back with Mac, but still determined to reassert her independence) to courier gems back to Mumbai. The whodunit is so transparent that Adler's real agenda shines through-demonstrating that the young, rich and beautiful are more deserving than the old, ugly and disadvantaged. Although her acerbic prose is a welcome diversion, Adler's tell-don't-show moralizing may have unintended consequences: Readers might sympathize more with Kitty than with her smugly entitled jet-setter nemeses. Agent: Anne Sibbald/Janklow & Nesbit

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169749625
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	07/01/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
Los Angeles. Christmas Eve.
 
Sunny Alvarez boarded the Air France flight to Paris. It had taken all her precious air miles and a great deal of money but if she was going to be unhappy she was going to do it first class. In style. And alone.
She wore no makeup, not even her trademark brave red lipstick. Tinted frameless glasses helped disguise her eyes, swollen from crying. Tall, slender with a fall of dark hair that swung over her face, she looked younger than her thirty-six years and somehow vulnerable. She wore narrow jeans stuffed into tall black sheepskin UGGs, a black cashmere turtleneck, a black peacoat that she now flung off and handed to the waiting steward, before flinging herself into the comfortable leather seat that could be made to recline, so that later she might sleep stretched out full length. If she could ever find “sleep” again. The flight was a long one. Eleven hours.
Eleven hours without Mac Reilly.
Her fiancé was TV’s famous detective with his own program, Mac Reilly’s Malibu Mysteries, handsome in his own slightly worn, casual, confident, way. . . . No dammit! Mac was more than that. He was sexy, good looking, blue eyes that looked into hers with passion when he made love to her—No! Change that to when they made love together. Because making love with Mac Reilly, the feel of his hands on her body, the way his skin smoothed under her own hands, the way her own skin seemed to melt under his, the electric shock his lips on hers always gave her, hot-wiring her, sending tremors through her until all she could think about was sex, sex with him . . .
She had met Mac at a press party for his TV show. He’d told her he’d noticed her across the room. “How could I miss you, in that outfit?” was what he had actually said.
She had on a black turtleneck and a tiny white mini skirt and her tough-girl motorcycle boots because she’d ridden there on her Harley. Mac tapped her on her shoulder and she found herself looking at this rugged guy in jeans and a T-shirt, whose deep blue eyes were taking her in like she was the best thing he had seen all night.
He asked her name, she’d said she knew his. Neither was drinking because they were driving, but both had that elated feeling of being on another planet where even the noise of the party seemed suddenly muted. Later Mac told her he noticed her clunky boots first, and she told him she’d noticed his muscular arms and had wanted to be wrapped in them right there and then, she didn’t care who saw.
Of course they were total opposites: Mac, dragged up by his bootstraps from the streets of Boston and the Miami crime scene to the Private Eye and TV personality he now was. And she, the half-Latina wild child brought up on a ranch, beautiful and brainy and ditzy, but with a business degree from Wharton and the determination to be her own woman.
It had been, as they’d told each other so often since, love at first sight. Eyes across the room—or maybe a bit closer.
And that was the way it was. And had been. Until now.
Stop it! Sunny sat up straight in her airline chair, pushed back her long dark hair, skewered it in a ponytail and accepted the glass of champagne the steward was offering her.
She stared at the glass in her hand, not really seeing it. She was Mac’s fiancée no longer. They had been together four years and were to have been married next month but he’d changed his plans yet again. Mac had also agreed they would get married last year, and a couple of times preceding that. Every time it got close something else came up. Another mystery he simply had to take on. He couldn’t say no. Except, it seemed, to Sunny.
This time was the last straw, she had even bought the dress—cream—white didn’t look so good in winter. And lace, although she was not usually a lace girl. Sleek, fitted to her rather good body, because even though she said it herself, it was a good body. A great body, Mac had always said that.
Sunny stuck out her long legs in the comfy sheepskin knee-high UGG boots, staring at them, but again not seeing them. She was seeing the heart-shaped pink diamond engagement ring she had left on Mac’s pillow, with a little note telling him goodbye. I’m leaving your life, she had written. There is no room for me, only for your work. Good luck. She had signed it simply with the initial S.
A whine came from the Vuitton dog carrier. She looked at the small Chihuahua, peering mournfully out. Tesoro weighed all of three pounds. “A fiend on four paws,” Mac called her, and he was right, the Chihuahua had sunk her teeth, and her claws, into Mac many a time, as well as intimidating Mac’s own dog, the one-eyed, three-legged ragamuffin he adored and whose life Mac had saved, and who went by the name of Pirate. It was Tesoro’s feud with Pirate that had kept Mac and Sunny from living together, though now Sunny thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Leaving a home they had shared, Mac’s funky little cottage on the shore in Malibu, would have been twice as hard.
They braced for takeoff. She strapped Tesoro in her carrier into an adjacent seat, leaned back, felt the thrust as the plane lifted off. It was over. She was gone.
A tear trickled down her cheek. She was on her way to Paris. Alone.
 
Excerpted from It All Began in Monte Carlo by Elizabeth Adler.
Copyright  2010 by Elizabeth Adler.
Published in 2010 by St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.

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