Royal Heist: A Novel (La Plante, Lynda) [Versión Kindle]

Lynda La Plante, author of "Royal Heist," previously wrote the substantial police procedural "Prime Suspect." As a former actress, she then produced that book for television, under the same title. It thereupon became the influential, prestigious Edgar award-winning, British Broadcasting Company, and, later, Public Broadcasting System television series "Prime Suspect," starring Helen Mirren. That book, and tv show, were infused with the gritty realism of the English cop shop as it then was: La Plante researched it by interviewing the highest-ranking English police woman of the time. Book and tv series were also infused with the gritty realism of some of the meanest streets to be found in England at the time. In fact, in a recent interview, Mirren claimed that "Prime Suspect" was the first tv crime drama to accurately portray the workings of English police stations: all previous programs, she stated, even, for example, "Inspector Morse," were not. However, La Plante's "Royal Heist" turns its back on realistic grit: it's a crime caper set in the rarified world of horse racing, sport of kings, among some impossibly beautiful glamorous people.

Immensely rich Edward de Jersey, owner of prize horses, beautiful wife and daughters, meets the Queen of England at Ascot racetrack, and then is ruined by a [...] collapse. Therefore, de Jersey, a self-made man, born plain old Eddy Jersey, son to a bookie in London's East End, decides his only option is to steal the Queen's jewels, including the gigantic, invaluable Koh-I-Noor diamond. (He had, you see, originally made his fortune by a series of daring, big bucks, famous robberies, gold bullion, that sort of thing.) The author has here produced a reasonably complex caper, though, in the manner of this particular genre, she never actually tells you how this crime might be done; that probably just isn't the done thing.

Royal personages, world-famous authors, athletes, billionaires, performers, television personalities, and impossibly beautiful glamorous people tend to upend the delicate balance a good mystery needs, if you ask me. But somebody must like them: they do sell. Your cup of tea?

I generally like my caper novels with laughs and switchbacks. Instead, LaPlante, creator of TV's "Prime Suspect," delivers ruthlessness and daring. And a seemingly endless supply of obstacles. All of which Edward de Jersey is single-mindedly determined to overcome in his do-or-die quest to keep his life in the style to which he has become accustomed.

De Jersey, son of a bookie, has risen to the top of British society on the proceeds of previous criminal success. Now he breeds racehorses, looking for his crowning jewel, a derby winner. With Royal Flush that glory is almost within grasp when it all comes tumbling down. Suddenly, in a dot.com tumble, he's bankrupt. His trusted accountant has lost it all and killed himself.

Having previously carried out Britain's most daring robberies (a fact unknown to all but his accomplices), de Jersey dreams up a scheme to gather his old gang together and recoup his losses. By stealing the Crown Jewels. There are lots of problems with this plan, of course. Security seems impregnable. The old gang isn't getting any younger and none of them have stolen so much as a stick of gum in years. De Jersey's wife is angry and suspicious about his secrecy. His accountant's sister-in-law has gotten curious. And the team of robbers keeps getting bigger.

To pull this one off de Jersey needs a lot of accomplices, including a computer hacker, a queen, a lady-in-waiting, and a footman. De Jersey himself becomes a less sympathetic character as the plans grow more complicated, but the secondary characters are appealing. There's an odd distance to this novel, which is a mite off-putting, but the daring plot keeps the pages turning.

Lynda LaPlante, Royal Heist (Random House, 2004)

It took me about a year and a half to read Royal Heist. Not continuously, of course. I started it back in December of 2007, struggled through the first few chapters, and when it had to go back to the library, didn't renew it. Here comes 2009, and I'm going through my backlist cleaning it out, so I put the book on hold again and pick up where I left off. (I get questions about that sort of thing. Honestly, I don't find it any harder to do that after eighteen months than I do putting a book down at night and picking it up again the next morning. I don't know why.) I'm glad I did, because it does markedly improve once you're farther into it, but I came very close to abandoning it for good after the first seventy-five pages or so. Be warned.

The novel concerns Edward de Jersey, formerly Eddie Jersey, a thief and con man during his younger years. With his friends James Driscoll and Tony Wilcox, he was part of a band of thieves known as the Three Musketeers, who after pulling off one of the biggest heists in British history, quit their lives of crime and went legitimate. Until, that is, all three invest in an internet startup run by someone even more fraudulent than they are. De Jersey, now a Thoroughbred owner with a horse who has a great deal of promise for next year's Derby, has no intentions of his ship going down, much less him going down with it. But the more he thinks about it, the more he has only one option: revive the Three Musketeers and pull off an even more audacious robbery, one that will return to them the hundreds of millions of pounds they lost.

Once we get into the planning of the heist, the book picks up. We don't get there for quite a while, however, and the setup is interminable. What's more odd is that the book's three-act structure would dictate a similarly detailed description of the police investigation after the heist (which occurs in act 2, naturally), but that part of the book is skimped on, glossed over in comparison to the setup and the robbery itself. Where we get detailed characterizations of the players on the shadowy end of things, the cops are no more than cardboard cutouts, and wet ones at that.

Readable, but not much else. **