While I really enjoyed “Sun Damage” by Sabine Durrant, the title doesn’t provide even a hint at what is really going on in this exciting, tension-filled novel. A better title, I think, would be a phrase used in the book, “Risky Games,” because those are, after all, exactly what Ali, the main character, is engaged in for much of the story.

We first meet her in the south of France as she and her partner, Sean, decide to con a tourist on the beach. This tourist, Lulu, appears to be ripe for the picking, and the scam seems to be going well. The first person narration really helps us understand Ali’s motives and her background. We learn how she has ended up in a modest hotel on this beach, running cons on people, fleecing them, and then escaping to another exotic location before anyone is the wiser.

However, this scam ends in a devastating manner, and Ali needs to find a way to disappear. She ends up posing as a chef for a family that’s rented a summer home in France. Durrant’s descriptions are delightful and we can smell the slightly musty rooms in the large home and feel the intense summer sun burning down on the swimming pool and our shoulders. The family Ali ends up working for is an interesting mix, and while Ali is pretending to be someone she is not, she comes to realize that all the people in the house, the family and their visiting friends, are also hiding a multitude of veritable sins.

At the same time, she is worried that someone from her past life is looking for her, and she’s constantly looking over her shoulder in fear that Sean, her former partner, will find her. Just what might happen if she is found is too worrisome to consider. We feel the tension building, and we keep turning the pages, reading on to find out if she gets away with her audacious plan or if her deceit is discovered.

I especially appreciated when Ali explains that the scams exist virtually wherever you look: a mobile number you don’t recognize, an email with a rebate offer if you click on the link. Ali says, “They’re everywhere, we’re everywhere, though you don’t need me to tell you that.” Call centers in South Korea, scams from a kitchen in UK or a basement in Vladivostok, the cons are indeed, it seems, everywhere. Especially after reading a novel about scams from the opposite point of view, the victim’s, in Spencer Quinn’s fine novel, “Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge,” reading about clever scams from the point of view of the perpetrator is an eye opener. That book and this one would be interesting choices for a book club to read and discuss together, in fact. You will definitely look at the world a bit differently after finishing this well done thriller.

This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.