Heist Society

Heist Society Synopsis
When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected. 

Soon, Kat's friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat's father isn't just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it's a spectacularly impossible job? She's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family's history--and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

Plot Synopsis
The story begins with Kat Bishop being expelled from prestegious boarding school Colgan School, after being deftly framed for ruining the headmaster's car in the school's fountain. The real culprit is revealed to be an old friend, Hale, who drags Kat from her would-be life at Colgan and back into the Bishops' way of living. Hale, a mysterious, handsome boy as equally talented as (and maybe a little bit more than) Kat, explains that Arturo Taccone, whom Hale can only describe as a "bad man," has been robbed of five priceless paintings and blames Kat's father Bobby Bishop.

A visit to Bobby himself has Kat convinced that, due to his 24-hour Interpol tail, he is innocent to the crime, but Taccone is not as easily persuaded. Angrily, he gives Kat two weeks to give him his paintings, or "he won't be the only one to lose something he loves." Terrified by the threat, Kat and Hale are desperate track down the real convict and steal Taccone's paintings back--before he can do something that'll hurt them all. The two use their finely-tuned resources--from Taccone's suveillance tapes to Kat's beautiful cousin Gabrielle--to track down a name: Visily Romani.

A trip to Kat's Uncle Eddie in New York has her more determined than ever, especially when he forbids them to go any further, claiming that no one--no one--messed with a Chelovek Pseudonima, or the old families who had the only right to names like Visily Romani.

After much digging, Kat realizes that Romani has hidden Taccone's paintings in plain sight. They wait just behind five more precious paintings in the famed Henley Museum (Kat's personal favorite). Kat's world seems to crumble as she finds the only way to keep her family safe (besides turning her father in to Interpol) is to rob one of the most un-robbable museums in the world.

She enlists Hale, Gabrielle, family friends Angus and Hamish Bagshaw, long-time ally Simon, and a newcomer pickpocket called Nick to help her on what could possibly be criminal suicide, but despite all this, each of them readily agree, eager for fame.

With more effort than in possesion, called-in favors, expensive equipment, and plenty of luck, Kat and her friends manage to emerge with Taccone's paintings in hand. But only four.

Coming to the stumbling realization that Nick is the son of an Interpol detective on the hunt for her father, Kat arranges for Interpol to catch Taccone red-handed (earning herself an unnecessary enemy in the process), has her father released from Interpol custody, and returns happily with the only regret in her mind being that she never found the last painting.

It is revealed by Abiram Stein, an old friend of her dead mother's, that the artwork, Girl Praying to Saint Nicholas, is in fact a portrait of Kat's great-great-grandmother, the only thing her mother could not steal.

Only in the peak of her happiness, basking in the renewed love of her family, that she receives a package in the mail with a single canvas inside, and signed,

Visily Romani.