I received a free advance ARC of the 'War of Thieves Box Set' from Ernest Dempsey for my honest review and I also purchased it.
I totally enjoyed this one, basically it's good verse evil, liked that it's about lost artwork from WWII, just didn't want it to end and really liked master thief Adriana Villa.
Basically Two Billionaire colleagues, who are part of a group of rich men called the syndicate and make a hundred million wager on three lost pieces of art.
The artwork went missing during World War 2, plenty of people have previously looked for them, following every possible lead, never finding them and many believed that they would never be found.
Frank Shaw and Stefan Martens would each pick a thief, they could not intervene in the competition and both used drastically different methods to pick their thief.
Martens picks Adriana Villa 'the good thief', by kidnapping her father Diego Villa and forces her to compete by threating to kill her only living relative and if she successes in the competition he'll be set free.
Villa is a master thief, who refers to herself as a recovery agent, she's tough, lethal thanks to her dad, misses no detail and someone that you'd want as a friend verse an enemy.
She specializes in a very niche market of stolen artwork but she only steals back pieces that have been stolen from it's original owner and returns it to them or in most cases their estates.
The stakes in the contest are higher for her. While she'll be compensated monetarily, her father's life is in her hands and she has the added pressure not to fail.
Shaw picks his underling Allyson Webster 'the bad thief', someone he plucked off of the streets at a young age and mentored her into his own lethal weapon.
She's been dubbed by the Authorizes as, 'The Chameleon', since no one knows her name, she's believed to be an American, don't trust her and down right evil, due to killing anyone that gets in her way during a job.
Shaw offers her 15 Million per piece of artwork, she brings back to him or proof of it's destruction, she can walk away with 55 Million in the end and also being watched by one of his other underlings Evan. Plus he has no problem intervening to win the competition.
Adriana and Allyson will have five days to find, then steal the painting and are given clues to finding each piece of artwork. Each piece was lost during World War II.
The first piece for the two to find is the Bellini, also referred to as the Madonna and Child and painted by Giovanni Bellini. The painting went missing near the end of WWII, believed to be taken by Russian Soldiers.
The second painting was 'the Annunciation', painted by Peter Paul Rubens, lost at the beginning of WWII and believed to have been taken by a Nazi Officer.
The third painting was a Rembrandt, titled 'An Angel With Titus features', which was taken by the Nazi's during WWII and was one of 300 pieces of art taken to Paris to be in Hitler's Museum.
I'm not going to get any further in the story. Although the two thief's do have an alliances by the time this competition, they defy the odds and two people pay the ultimate price in the end.
'War of Thieves' has everything I like in a book, full of twist and turns, fly by the seat of your pants reading, realistic, credible, imagination, and fast paced.
I do have to say that the author did an amazing job with this book. Creating a realistic, credible conclusions to finding three pieces of artwork, that are in the top-10 for pieces of artwork lost or stolen during WWII.
I highly recommend this one, Ernest Dempsey's one of my favorite authors and can't wait for the next adventure with Adriana Villa.