The Big Kahuna

Fox and O’Hare, Book #6

By Janet & Peter Evanovich

ISBN# 9780525536642

Author’s Website: evanovich.com

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi

Review

Kate’s boss has had it with the exorbitant expenses she and Nick rack up on their cases.  So, he has added a third member to their team.  Kate’s former obnoxious cube neighbor, Cosmo Uno.  Always ready with his forms, he will surely help keep expenses down.  Maybe her boss underestimates Nick’s charms and tactics to get his way.

Jessup has also put them on a case that he doesn’t feel is really their expertise and one that should stay pretty simple and cheap.  A billionaire has gone missing, and the new trio is on the case.  However, the case isn’t as cut and dried as Jessup had hoped.  Someone has been killing CEO billionaires from the Silicon Valley tech companies and now the Big Kahuna needs to be found before it’s too late.

This is the first installment of the series without Lee Goldberg co-authoring so I was curious if the change would be noticeable.  I would say that it probably is.  This book was co-written with Janet’s son, Peter.  I found Nick was even funnier than usual, in the beginning, but kind of waned as the book went on. And, he seems quite intent to get into Kate’s pants, which I don’t remember being so obvious in the past.  Granted, they finally did hook-up at the end of the last book, so maybe it is to be expected, at least a little.   But he’s already been there, so he shouldn’t need to try so hard.  The storyline itself didn’t seem like the usual case for this duo (now trio).  I missed Nick’s big elaborate cons and found this book lacking because of it.  I got bored with their case and wanted to see Nick’s usual flair.

There always seems to be a bit of disconnect with these books though.  The way the characters were acting, it seemed like Kate and Nick never hooked up.  Also, as many times as Nick’s cover stories have included a fake engagement, how can Kate still act surprised when he pulls out a ring and throws her into another fake relationship?  As many times as it happens, maybe he just wants it to be real….

I do think Cosmo added a lot of humor to the book, adding another zany character to the mix.  However, he did not seem to help at all where the expenses are concerned.  So, I’m curious if he will still be part of the team going forward.

The book overall was kind of mid for me and didn’t really feel like it belonged in this series.  Lee Goldberg’s absence was definitely felt.  The characters were still good though, always fun and crazy.  We will have another co-writer change for the next book, The Bounty.  So, we will see how that goes.  It looks like that will be the final book in the series (maybe a sign that the co-author experiment failed again), which makes me sad. Hopefully we’ll get back to a normal case for Kate and Nick where they can show off their talents.  And, maybe get a romantic resolution as well …. One hopes anyway.