From Booklist
Fans of her acclaimed Robin Hudson series already appreciate the wacky world of Sparkle Hayter, but this stand-alone comic thriller kicks it up several notches. Hayter's superhip version of chick lit features two twentysomething heroines who take Europe by storm on the ultimate post-college road trip. Icy blonde Chloe and tattooed brunette Blackie head for Italy, armed with backpacks and travel guides. Their main source of entertainment, however, soon proves to be ripping off the sleazy, lying married men who come on to them almost constantly. Although their schemes work perfectly at first, they soon mess with the wrong guy and steal a valuable statue of the Hindu god Ganesh. Among the multitude of fascinating characters populating Hayter's story are an East Indian mob family, a depressed newspaperman, and a spoiled runaway heiress who continually snorts coke. Hayter's stories work so well because she not only creates the interesting characters and over-the-top plots but because she does so in a dry, straight-faced prose style that makes it all the funnier.
Jenny McLarinCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
A LITTLE ITALY, A LITTLE FRANCE, A LITTLE CRIME, A LITTLE ROMANCE
Meet Blackie and Chloe, two best friends who decide, over tequila shots at the campus bar, to spend the summer after graduation backpacking through Europe. Blackie wants to go a little crazy—drink, smoke, flirt, meet men, have a romance or two. Chloe wants to nurse her broken heart and bury her nose in a book. One is dark and boisterous, the other blond and quiet. Together, they are an irresistible combination to men . . . married men, to be exact.
The girls upgrade their accommodations from hostels to hotels when they let the men who’ve been wrecking their trip finance their fun. Accepting these cheaters’ invitations to their hotel suites, Blackie and Chloe beat them at their own game and make off with cash and whatever valuables are at hand while the men sleep it off. It’s the perfect crime (no married man would want to explain why he had two young coeds in his hotel room, now would he?) until they hit the wrong mark in Monte Carlo. When their latest “victim” turns up dead, the gig is up . . . and the Bandit Queens are on the run.
Chloe and Blackie’s ride through Europe gets a whole lot wilder with a bevy of wacky characters in hot pursuit of the two women who were last seen with the dead man and his golden statue. Will they be arrested, strain their friendship, or worse?
Bandit Queen Boogie is a wild goose chase of mistaken identity and international intrigue. If only every trip to Europe was this much fun.
