Heist Society by Ally Carter

Kat hasn't exactly had what you might call a "normal upbringing," what with being raised by the best art thief alive and all. That's why she's decided to give up the family business for a taste of normal adolescence. Her best scam yet lands her in an elite boarding school...for a blissful three months.

Of course, her best friend and former partner Hale shows up with different plans. He successfully gets her booted out after framing her for a big prank. With no other options readily available, she heads home with him. It turns out that maybe he did it for less than selfish reasons. Her dad seems to be the target of his own frame job, and is now in very real danger from a mobster whose art has been stolen.

How the pieces were stolen is another matter, and one of the reasons her father is suspected. The security at Arturo's place is state of the art, and that's putting it lightly. Kat tries to talk to Arturo, explain what happened, but he's having none of it. Five paintings were stolen by a thief calling himself Visily Romani. He tells her that if his paintings aren't returned in 10 days, someone will be making a house call, and her father's going to end up dead. With that motivation, Kat gets to work.

First, she does her research. Kat calls up Uncle Eddie (who is almost everyone's "uncle" in the business) for intel on her thief. Visily Romani, it turns out, is a sacred name. Thieves use it as a pseudonym for things too big to be known even between each other. "It is an alias that is not used lightly, young man," Uncle Eddie answered," (Carter pg. 101).

Her next stop is to find out what she can about the history of the paintings, and learns they were stolen by the Nazis during WWII. These paintings are already stolen property. Sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief, so Kat decides she will steal them back. The paintings are discovered at the Henley, one of the truly great art museums, and one with an overwhelming amount of security.

First she has to build a crew, and that is no small task. This job has to fly way under the radar, even for a thief! Hale is at her side, her cousin Gabrielle joins them, the Bagshaw brothers, and one random (cute male) pick-pocket she found and befriended. This heist was going to be impossible by most standards, but they have to try. Her father's life hangs in the balance. Can they pull it off?

Fast paced, fun, and sassy, Carter has a true feel for action girl stories that maintain a strong female character without diminishing intelligence. I enjoyed this even more than her spy series, highly recommended, especially for girls.

"The guards might have seen the boy throw his arm around the girl's neck and hold a camera out in front of them, snapping pictures. They might have noticed how the couple paced from one end of the wall to the next. They didn't, of course, see that the pictures were really of the positions of the cameras, that their paced steps were mapping out the dimentions of the perimeter wall.
They were simply two teens who appeared to be in the midst of a great autumn.
But, of course, the guards didn't see a lot of things," (Carter, pg. 142, 2010).

*Library Link*

If you liked this, check out:
Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter (Heist Society, Book 2)
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You by Ally Carter (Gallagher Girls, Book 1)
Spy Goddess: Live and Let Shop by Michael Spradlin
Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Carter, Ally. (2010). Heist Society. New York: Disney/Hyperion.