The Chase

This is a series by Janet Evanovich working with Lee Goldberg. Kate O'Hare is an FBI agent who has an obsession with master thief Nicolas Fox.  Apparently she finally caught him and he is now working with the FBI to catch bad guys. So imagine Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality meets Neal Caffrey in White Collar and you have the characters pretty close to the ones in this book. As in her Stephanie Plum books, you need to throw in unconventional relatives--in this case it's Jake, Kate's father, who was a special ops guy back in the day, and who now provides support for those operations requiring a little more force than finesse.  The initial play is to retrieve a valuable Chinese artifact that has been stolen from the Smithsonian before the Smithsonian is supposed to return it to the Chinese. This involves not just stealing it from the current illegitimate owner, Carter Grove, who happens to be a former White House Chief of Staff and now runs a hugely successful security (i.e., mercenaries) firm, but also a mid-air switch so the Chinese do not discover the original theft. All this goes according to plan, with a few hurdles successfully overcome. When Grove comes after Kate's extended family, however, the goal switches to taking him down, which can only be done only by luring him into making another stolen art purchase. As with other of Evanovich's books, things blow up, there is unconsummated sexual tension between protagonists, and the good guys and gals prevail. These are light reads that are always entertaining and well written with interesting, if somewhat improbable, characters.