★★★★☆ The Sting meets Fiddler on the Roof

Lady Eve's Last Con

Rebecca Fraimow

** spoiler alert **

Ruthi Johnson, our first-person narrator, arrives at the wealthy resort New Monte (which seems to be a satellite orbiting the quondam planet Pluto, not that that ever matters) bent on revenge. Esteban Mendez-Yuki, the scion of the obscenely wealthy Mendez-Yuki family and corporation, knocked up Ruthi's kid sister Jules then abandoned her. Ruthi is here for revenge. Since she and Jules are con artists, conning Esteban is the best way she knows of getting vengeance. Also, the money couldn't hurt. Jules is not here with her -- she's back at a nice resort colony making Esteban's baby.

OK, this is obviously a disaster waiting to happen. It's hard to read Ruthi's schemes of revenge and imagine any way this can have a happy ending. While Esteban is kind of feckless and oblivious, he has a half-sister Sol who is both protective of him and frighteningly smart and competent. She is also, as it happens, very attractive to Ruthi. So, Ruthi begins to enact her plan to reel Esteban in and stuff happens to Sol and to Ruthi.

At about a third of the way through the book, I began to discern a possibility for pulling off a happy ending. That was, for me, the main interest of the story -- watching Rebecca Fraimow engineer a plausible path. I'm not telling you there IS a happy ending. I'm not telling you there is NOT. But we need that possibility to make the story work -- the is-there-a-path-out-of-this-disaster suspense drove the story -- and it's very well done. There was even a twist near the end that I totally failed to see coming, even though it made perfect sense.

When I was in High School, I saw the movie The Sting. In The Sting two small time con artists play a revenge con. It is impossible to watch the film and not come out of the theatre smiling, or even dancing a little with joy. (Well, it may not be literally impossible, but it certainly was not something I could do.) That's what Lady Eve's Last Con felt like. Now, I want to emphasize that aside from the points I've just mentioned, there is no similarity between the plots of The Sting and Lady Eve's Last Con. In particular, I'm not telling you whether or not Ruthi's con succeeds.

One thing that took me entirely by surprise (and the reason I'm marking this review a spoiler) was the Yiddishkeit. Ruthi and Jules grew up culturally Jewish. I seriously doubt that Ruthi keeps shabbat or eats kosher -- but I am quite confident that she would be comfortable doing both if she wanted to. And, although it is not huge, Ruthi's Yiddishkeit even has an essential plot function. There's also an explicit reference to Fiddler on the Roof.

Heist/con stories can be tremendous fun, and this one is. It left me smiling.

I received an advance reader copy of Lady Eve's Last Con from NetGalley and Rebellion. This review expresses my honest opinions.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

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