Kirkus Reviews
Thelma and Louise do Europe in Hayter's (the Robin Hudson female detective series) witty account of two American girls who go wild on vacation and end up in big trouble. Chloe Bowen and Blackie Maher just want to have some fun. Still smarting several weeks after being unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, college senior Chloe decides to snap herself out of the doldrums by going ahead with a long-planned summer vacation in Europe, taking her best friend Blackie with her instead of Mr. Ex. It turns out to be an inspired move: Chloe and Blackie have similar tastes in just about everything except men, so they manage to get along fine and never end up stealing each other's heartthrobs. In fact, they soon discover that they're natural-born con-girls, adept at spotting married philanderers in hotel bars, slipping them mickeys in their rooms, and robbing them blind once they've passed out. Like many careers, Chloe and Blackie's excursion into crime begins by mistake, goes on as a curiosity, and soon develops into a smooth and lucrative routine. But you have to be careful when you pick your marks, and the girls make their first misstep when they roll an Australian gangster and end up in possession of a gold-plated statuette that's been stolen from a Bombay mafioso. What's inside it? We don't know for sure, but soon the Aussie has been murdered by mob goons who then set off in pursuit of Chloe and Blackie. On top of that, it turns out that Chloe is the look-alike of an English aristocrat who has lately broken out of a Swiss rehab center and gone into hiding. They say travel is broadening, but Chloe and Blackie, if they can't find their way home, may soon be flattened out by the experience. Lightand frothy but undeniably sweet: a pleasant excursion to nowhere, done up in high style at a brisk pace.