Published about the same time as the earlier novels in the Lucas Davenport series, this second offering in the Kidd/LuEllen series is a much less compelling read. Kidd is a con artist/computer hacker/painter who teams up with burglar LuEllen on his more complex undertakings. Things usually go awry and they are left to scramble and improvise to escape with their life.

In The Empress File their scam works much better than in "The Fool’s Run," the previous Kidd/LuEllen caper. However, the story is not particularly compelling and I found it less much less interesting than most other Sandford novels.

The ending is particularly dissatisfying. Kidd’s decision to retrieve a murder weapon is particularly puzzling because it appears to be unnecessary. His decision to hold on to it instead of making use of it quickly compounds the situation. Readers can tell almost immediately that it is a plot device designed to place Kidd and LuEllen in danger and of course it does exactly that.

Following the somewhat overdone and dissatisfying climax Sandford devotes the final 15 pages to telling us how everything else turned out. This classic violation of the principle of, “show, don’t tell,” could be assigned as a textbook example illustrating the importance of that dictum. ( )

Kidd returns, as does LuEllen, a professional thief who is Kidd’s occasional partner and occasional lover. This time his task is to take down Longstreet, a corrupt Delta town on the eastern side of the Mississippi River, presumably in Louisiana but perhaps Mississippi. Not just an expert computer hacker, Kidd has made his official living as a designer of political strategy. It makes him the perfect person to destroy the town’s power structure. The conclusion is not as satisfying as in Kidd’s previous outing, Fool’s Run, mainly because it ends in a physical confrontation, denying us the pleasure of watching the bad guy’s world crumble around them. But still worth the read. ( )

Quick and lots of fun, The Empress File is the second in John Sanford's "Kidd" series. Part of the fun is that these are largely (though far from entirely) cyber-theft capers, but they were written in the relatively early days of cyber-world, so the techniques and equipment are noticeably outdated. They still make calls from phone booths, for instance. Anyway, appealing characters, if not particularly believable in terms of their slick skills make for an enjoyable reading experience. There are some bad, bad people running a southern town. Aren't there always? ( )

Kidd and LuEllen take on a corrupt political machine by building a political machine of their own. Danger and deception in the deep south.

Still not my favorite Sanford characters, but the pair is definitely growing on me. ( )

another good read ( )