An Honorable Thief MM Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Romance
JMS Books LLC
Aug. 26, 2023
Kindle
170
Amazon
Ash Logan is a freelance computer consultant ... and a professional thief. A thief with honor, he believes, as he only retrieves items that have been stole from someone, returning them to the original owners.
He is also a loner, almost a prerequisite all things considered. He has second thoughts about that when he meets Mark Goode and they become friends with benefits. When Mark figures out Ash is a thief, he claims to be one as well. After some consideration, Ash agrees to take him along on his next job -- retrieving a stolen statuette.
When Mark betrays him by taking the statuette from him at gun point, Ash vows to get even. It will take all his skills as both a computer expert and a thief, but he has time and incentive, especially when he finds out who Mark really is -- Pete Dixon.
What happens next is complicated and may change both their lives, if they can survive a crooked art collector who wants Pete dead.
Review By Ulysses Dietz
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Edward Kendrick’s An Honorable Thief is a romance novel, but written in a journalistic style that is, in itself, rather unromantic. Like Neil Plakcy’s Mahu novels, it has the kind of careful detail and crisply defined action of a police procedural—which is ultimately just right for this book.
Ashton Logan is a thief, but not just any thief. In a Robin-Hood-type twist, he steals stolen objects and returns them to their rightful owners. It’s a rather appealing notion, neatly side-stepping my deep issues with the glorification of criminals.
This all gets complicated when Ash, a lifelong loner who lunches with his society-matron mother and keeps her wondering about his private life, meets a slightly younger man who calls himself Mark. Mark is a handy-man, and also an actual thief.
Ash Logan is a nicely rounded character, a master computer-whiz by day, and a sort-of righter-of-wrongs by night. Mark is more difficult to pin down, and figuring him out becomes a central issue of the narrative when an odd reversal of fortune places Ash at an uncomfortable disadvantage.
It is a strange notion to have a thief as a moral compass, but Kendrick pulls it off, giving Ash a James Bondian cool, with his technical wizardry and intelligence. As a lifelong museum curator, the various issues of dealing with galleries and trusting art dealers and collectors hits fairly close to home for me. The fact that I ended up liking and admiring Ash Logan says a lot about the author’s skill.