Perfect (Kick Keswick Mysteries #3) by Marne Davis Kellogg

Kick Keswick is the world's best jewel thief.  But she is retired.  That is until the Queen's jewels are stolen and Kick is recruited to steal them back.  Kick enters the world of the beyond wealthy to find the thief and get back the jewels and it will take all her wits and skill to do just that.

If I were going to commit to using my highly developed skills and signature techniques, I wouldn't dream of putting myself in jeopardy or making myself vulnerable to capture by letting him, or anyone, seeing into my secret world. My secret world of Swiss bank vaults packed with stones and currency and identities.  I could vanish in seconds.
In fact, I just had.  p.31

I love heist stories.  And this one is an inverted heist story because Kick is a thief stealing from a thief at the behest of Scotland Yard.  Kick is very good at what she does and she knows a lot about jewels and jewelry and all the finest things in life.  I liked her and her descriptions of all these things.  And food.  OMG the food in this book is described in such detail.  I went around hungry the entire time I read it.

It turns out, though, that this is third in the series.  It wasn't a problem, prior knowledge isn't really necessary to read this one.  There is some summing up of past adventures but it's not blow-by-blow or anything.  But now I want to start at the beginning and read some of her adventures when she was an actual jewel thief and not just "coming out of retirement" for this caper.  Because Kick is very clever and really knows her stuff.  The plan is so simple yet so elaborate and I loved reading how it played out.  This is definitely a fun series if you like mysteries or heists or food or all of the above.

Hogwarts: Perfect Mini-challenge