Publisher: Orion (Trade Paperback – 10 December 2019)

Series: Riley Wolfe series – Book One

Length: 358 pages

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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From one of the world’s most popular thriller authors, Jeff Lindsay, comes Just Watch Me, an electrifying heist novel that pits an intriguing new protagonist against impossible odds.

Prepare to meet Riley Wolfe, the world’s greatest thief. Wolfe is a master of disguise, an expert con artist and a true devotee of the ridiculous heist. There is nothing he can’t steal, and he lives to target the super-rich with his capers in order to make them suffer. However, Wolfe is starting to get bored. His last few heists have gone off without a hitch and he is looking for a challenge. But his new target might be truly impossible to steal, even for him.

Wolfe has his eyes on some of the most impressive treasures in the world, the Crown Jewels of Iran, and in particular the Daryayeh-E-Noor, a gigantic pink diamond that is valued beyond compare. With the jewels finally out of Iran and in New York for a tour, Wolfe knows that this is the time to steal them. They have been placed within the most secure gallery in the country, which utilises impenetrable security systems, state-of-the-art alarms and a small army of former special forces soldiers acting as guards. In addition, a regiment of the lethal Iranian Revolutionary Guard are also standing watch, ready to kill anyone who gets too close. With these security measures in place, the jewels appear to be beyond the reach of any potential thieves, no matter how careful or elaborate their plan may be, and anyone who tries is going to end up dead. However, Wolfe is no ordinary thief, and he has come up with a cunning scheme that no one else would have ever thought of. If all his planning succeeds, he will have an opportunity to make off with the jewels. But with all manner of complications in front of him and a determined FBI agent hunting down his past, can even the great Riley Wolfe succeed, or will his most daring heist be his last?

When I first saw that Jeff Lindsay was doing a heist novel, I knew that I was going to have to grab a copy of it. Lindsay is a bestselling thriller author who debuted in 1994 with the novel Tropical Depression. Lindsay is of course best known for his Dexter series, which was adapted into a highly popular television series. While I have not had the pleasure of reading any of Lindsay’s work prior to this book, I did really enjoy the first few seasons of the Dexter television show, so I was really interested in seeing the author’s take on a heist novel. I am really glad that I checked Just Watch Me out as Lindsay has produced a deeply compelling and exceedingly fun novel that not only contains a really cool heist story, but which also features another complex protagonist for the reader to sink their teeth into.

First of all, let’s talk heists. For Just Watch Me, Lindsay came up with a very interesting heist scenario which sees one man try to break into a massively secure gallery guarded by some of the most sophisticated technology in the world, as well as some of the deadliest killers. The story follows Wolfe as he attempts to find some way into the building that everyone agrees in impenetrable, and while he initially encounters major setbacks, he eventually comes up with an audacious plan to get in. This plan is very bold and complicated, and involves a lot of manipulation, disguises, seduction, confidence work, forgeries, doublecrosses and even a couple of well-placed murders. All of this comes together into one fun and exciting conclusion which sees everyone understand the full extent of the plan. Lindsay paces out all the parts of the heist extremely well, and I really enjoyed how the entire thing unfolded, especially as it was a cool, roundabout way to attempt to steal something from a gallery. The heist proves to be an exceptional centre to the whole narrative, and I really enjoyed seeing how this part of the book progressed.

I also liked the way that Lindsay utilised multiple viewpoints to tell this story. While several chapters are told from the protagonist’s point of view using the first-person perspective, a large amount of the book is actually told from the perspective of the book’s side characters. These side characters include a range of different people, such as Wolfe’s allies, the people he is trying to manipulate, the FBI agent hunting him and even several bystanders who are caught up in the whole heist. All of these different viewpoints help to show off the various angles of the heist, which I felt helped enhance this part of the story. It was also really cool to see how normal people, including police officers, guards, gallery employees and some of his marks, perceive the various disguises he comes up with or the confidence tricks that he is pulling. I loved seeing this outside perspective of Wolfe’s criminal techniques, and it was a great way to portray a large amount of the heist.

While the heist is a really amazing part of this book, one of the most compelling parts of Just Watch Me is actually its protagonist, Riley Wolfe. Lindsay obviously has a lot of experience writing complex and intriguing protagonists for his thrillers, and he has done an amazing job creating another one here in Wolfe. Wolfe is a master thief whose defining characteristic is an overwhelming compulsion to steal from the mega-rich, especially those who obtained their wealth by screwing over the little people in the world. Wolfe is absolutely obsessed with his crusade against the rich due to his experiences as a child, and this obsession forces him to complete his heists no matter the cost. The author spends quite a bit of time exploring Wolfe’s hatred for the rich, and it is quite fascinating to see his internal thoughts on why he is stealing from them. The reader also gets to see some of the events from the character’s childhood which form the basis for this obsession. Ironically enough, the reason we get to learn so much about Wolfe’s childhood is because one of the book’s antagonists, FBI Special Agent Frank Delgado, becomes so obsessed with learning more about him that he briefly leaves the FBI in an attempt to hunt him down (obsession is a key element of several of the book’s main characters). Delgado spends several scenes scouring the country trying to find out Wolfe’s history, which is slowly revealed throughout the course of the book. I really enjoyed that Lindsay included this dive into the character’s past, and I felt that it really complemented the main heist storyline and helped to create a fantastic overall narrative, especially as this investigation into his history, represents the biggest risk to Wolfe’s freedom.

Now, as Wolfe steals from the richest of the rich, it might be easy to assume that he’s a good guy or an anti-hero you can cheer on, but that is really not true. Not only does this protagonist come across as an excessively arrogant person who is high on himself, but he also does a ton of stuff that is totally morally wrong. For example, throughout the course of the book, Wolfe commits several murders, frames people for crimes they did not commit and totally ruins a number of people’s lives. While some of these people probably deserve to suffer at the hands of Wolfe, a bunch really did nothing wrong; they were either born into money, in his way, or merely collateral damage. In one case, he even spends time thinking about how much he respects one of his victims right before he arranges for her to be arrested for art fraud. What’s even worse is that, in many cases, Wolfe doesn’t even realise that he’s done something wrong. While he knows that he maybe should not have committed some of the murders, he totally fails to think of the emotional consequences some of his cons or manipulations will have on the people he is playing. He is even called out about some of his actions towards the end of the book by his only friend; however, he completely fails to see her point of view. Instead he merely thinks that she is overreacting and goes right back to plotting to get into her pants. Stuff like this makes Wolfe a very hard protagonist to like, and even the knowledge that his actions and viewpoint are the result of a messed-up childhood doesn’t really help. It does result in a much more compelling story though, and it was refreshing to follow a morally ambiguous protagonist. I will be interested to see if Lindsay will examine the impacts Wolfe’s actions had on some of the supporting characters in a later book, and I personally would love to see a story where one of his incidental victims attempts to hunt him down to get revenge for their ruined lives.

I have to say that I was also really impressed with all the discussions of art, paintings and other valuables that the author was able to fit into the story. Lindsay obviously did a large amount of research into the subject (his acknowledgements mention an art professor he consulted) and it was interesting to read the various discussions about art and art forgery. I have to admit that I have no real knowledge of or appreciation for art (except comic book art), but I really enjoyed all the discussions about art style and technique that were peppered throughout the novel. Overall, this was a pretty intriguing inclusion in the book, and I found it to be quite fascinating at times.

In conclusion, Just Watch Me is an amazing fast-paced heist thriller that is really worth checking out. Lindsay has come up with not only an awesome scenario that features a fun heist at the centre but also another complex and morally corrupted protagonist whose inner demons and powerful obsessions we get to explore. I really enjoyed this excellent new book from Lindsay, and I am definitely planning to grab any future novels that come out in this series.

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