Seventeen-year-old Rosalyn Quest is the youngest member of the notorious Quest Crime family and she has been trained in the criminal arts since she was a small child by her ruthless mother.
When she receives a mysterious email inviting her to compete in the Thieves Gambit, she ignores it at first. But when she finds herself in an impossible situation, she signs up and is whisked away on a private plan to an undisclosed location to join up with several other criminal teens to compete in a winner-takes-all heist competition. The winner gets a wish – something that Rosalyn desperately needs. But when she arrives she finds an unwelcome addition – her arch-nemesis, Noelia Boschert, daughter of a rival crime family based in Europe.
Ross has been conditioned her whole life never to trust anyone, but when the other contestants team up on the first challenge and she is almost eliminated, she realises that she will have to work with her fellow competitors, even if she doesn’t fully trust them. And then there is the magnetic Devroe, who seems determined to win her over. But nothing is as it seems and the stakes are even higher than Ross realises.
Ross has a brilliantly devious mind and I particularly enjoyed the clever ways she outwits the other competitors as well as the organisers. This is an excellent heist novel, full of twists, turns and surprises. A cover quote describes it as ‘high octane’ a phrase Ross also used to describe her own family, and this is definitely accurate – the action is relentless and thrilling.
‘Thieves Gambit’ is a welcome addition to the usually male-dominated action-thriller category and is perfect for fans of ‘Alex Rider’, ‘Six of Crows’ and the ‘Oceans 11’ movie franchise.
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