Brilliant

by Marne Davis Kellogg Narrated by Kate Reading

Overview

Meet Kick Keswick, an elegant and self-possessed American who has been at London's venerable Ballantine & Company Auctioneer, Ltd., for over thirty years. She is an expert on paintings, furniture, and objets d'art, and so far has lived a perfectly happy life with things on her mind other than love. In fact, Kick rarely lets anyone into her private world. She prefers it that way. She adores her elegant London flat, her books, her music, her delicious meals, and, most of all, her jewels. Kick doesn't need a man in her life messing things up. But when American industrialist, scoundrel, and womanizer Owen Brace grabs the faltering Ballantine & Company in a corporate takeover, he turns Kick's world upside down, opening her eyes to large-scale love, romance and sensuous pleasure.*

Something tells Kick that Brace's motives are anything but sincere, however. And when he gets near enough to threaten Kick's closely guarded life, Brace learns the dangers of underestimating this woman. From sophicticated London to Kick's secluded farm in Provence, France, BRILLIANT is a playfully delicious novel of suspense, masterful revenge, and secrets of the multi-faceted kind.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Kick Keswick proves a strong, delightful and intelligent antiheroine as she leads the reader on a marvelous romp through London auction houses, the homes of the rich and famous, and the Provence countryside. Her early rough edges as an Oklahoma juvenile delinquent have been considerably smoothed under the 30-year tutelage of the elegant, now deceased Sir Cramner Ballantine, owner of Ballantine & Company Auctioneers. Remade as a lady of impeccable taste, Kick still has larceny in her soul and has made a successful secret career as jeweler and gem thief. Despite her lack of morals, she has her standards and thus deplores the takeover of the company by brash American businessman, philistine, and womanizer Owen Brace. As a woman of further contradiction, Kick also finds herself sexually drawn to Owen while flattered and intrigued by the attentions of detective Thomas Curtis. Full of fun and flare, Kick is indeed a kick, and Brilliant proves to be a gem of summer reading. Kellogg is the author of the Marshall Lily Bennett series (Nothing but Gossip). Highly recommended for popular fiction collections everywhere.-Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A witty page-turner from the author of, most recently, Insatiable (2001). The urbane Kick Keswick is senior executive assistant at the venerable London auction firm of Ballantine & Co. The daughter of an Oklahoma prostitute, Kick never had a leg up in the world until she was 18--when she was picked up (literally) by Sir Cranmer Ballantine, who spied her stranded in a pouring rain, gave her a lift to Claridge’s, and made her his mistress. Eventually, Kick became Cranmer’s secretary as well, a post she kept when his son Benjamin took over the business--to disastrous effect. So incompetent was Benjamin that, within a few years, Ballantine had been bought out by American millionaire Owen Brace (though Sir Cramner had set up a secret trust that still allowed Kick anonymously to control 15 percent of the business). Owen brought in a passel of Americans who knew even less about the auction trade than Benjamin did, but he was smart enough to keep Kick, who knew all the upper-echelon secrets of the London art market and was able, for a start, to convince Owen not to wear gold chains when making sales pitches to British lords. Soon Ballantine’s is getting high-profile commissions again and Kick has once more become the boss’s mistress. But she has a few secrets up her sleeve: in fact, she has a secret identity. Not only does she control part of Owen’s business behind his back, but she’s a jewel thief who processes her loot through a complicated network of Lichtenstein banks. Her latest haul came from Lady Melody Carstairs, whose boudoir Kick burgled while Owen was downstairs negotiating an auction contract: a contract that Lady Melody signed seconds before falling dead. As Kick prepares the jewelsfor sale, she grows increasingly troubled. Theft is one thing--but murder? Despite much insider lore about jewelry and objets d’art, a suspenseful account, with humor and a real sense of style. Agent: Robert Gottlieb/Trident Media Group

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172164606
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/22/2003
Edition description:	Unabridged

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