Evie Ever After-Beth Ciotta

Evie Ever After
Beth Ciotta
Harlequin HQN, Mar 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 9780373773602

Although the agents of Chameleon did not want the assignment, they did the job of winning back the money that the wife of Senator Clark lost gambling with Mad Dog Turner, who she said cheated her. The only actual government official on the team former Bunko Squad police officer Milo “Jazzman” Beckett sends the squad home with the mission accomplished of stopping a con artist while he finishes the close-out. Team member forty-one year old stage performer Evie Parrish is worried about him, but her younger lover, former con artist Arch “Ace: Duvall tells her Jazz is a big boy.

Jazzman is met at the airport by two fellow agents of the Artful Intelligence Agency that Chameleon is part of. They escort him to the AIA chief who informs him that he should not have killed Mad Dog. Jazzman insists he did not, but hard evidence proves otherwise, but AIA cleansed the crime scene. As his team work on a scam perpetuated by Madame Helene on Evie’s friend Jayne, they also decide to learn who inside of AIA set up their leader. At the same Evie wonders why Ace will not tell her who the mysterious Kate and his kid are; while Jazzman wonders why he likes Evie’s friend Nic Sparks who figuratively rips his skin off him when they meet.

The climax to the Evie trilogy (see ALL ABOUT EVIE and EVERYBODY LOVES EVIE) is lighthearted romantic suspense. The support cast is solid while readers will know from the onset whom the heroine is attracted to between the two hunks. Although the plot is a bit thin, fans will enjoy the antics of Evie and her Chameleon cohorts as they try to out con cons and want another tale starring Nic in time.

Harriet Klausner