Nightwork

Nightwork is a stand-alone novel by best-selling American author, Nora Roberts. By the time his mother dies after a third bout of cancer, eighteen-year-old Harrison Silas Booth has already been a thief for nine years. Even though his aunt Mags has been rock-solid in her support, past due notices fill the mailbox, adding stress when Dana Booth least needed it.

Harry is essentially self-taught, advancing from pick-pocketing to what he terms "nightwork": burglaries of luxury goods from rich homes. He contributes, surreptitiously, to the bills with his aunt's tacit approval. And, nightwork gives him a thrill. When Dana dies, Mags and Harry quit Chicago and go their separate ways, vowing to keep in touch.

Harry winds his leisurely way, as Silas Booth, to New Orleans, learning, always learning, discovering new things, making good friends and continuing to pay his way with a little nightwork. When a fence put him in touch with an accomplished thief, he ends up stealing a Turner sunset. The client insists on meeting him, but Silas is wary of the offer this privileged but greedy man makes.

He spends some time furthering his education in Texas before enrolling at a college that took his eye in North Carolina, at UNC, as Booth Harrison. His usual trick of staying under the radar comes apart when he falls in love with his professor's beautiful daughter, Miranda. Could he actually have a normal life?

It seems not. Carter LaPorte, that client from New Orleans is on his doorstep, insisting he take a statue from a museum in Baltimore. Refusal is not an option: this man is used to getting his own way, and Booth can't risk the overt threat of injury, even death to those he loves. He breaks a heart, steals a statue, and vows to maintain his distance thereafter.

Thanks to his love of acting and theatre, Booth is by now expert at switching identities, and escapes the country to avoid LaPorte's further demands: he will not be owned. But he doubts this man will ever tire of his pursuit, and begins to long for a more settled existence: a job as an English/drama teacher in a mid-size town would fit the bill. And does, until someone who knows him arrives…

Roberts really is an accomplished story-teller, making this very readable, with characters who endear themselves to the reader and repay the investment of time and emotion. And this story has everything a reader could want: food, theatre, theft, love and romance, and a clever sting to turn the tables on a ruthless collector. Enjoyable, entertaining and hard to put down. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK