ABOUT THE BOOK

Bookseller, thief - Bernie Rhodenbarr can't resist the lure of a long lost Kipling poem, even if it is locked inside a millionaire's high security library. So Bernie goes browsing and sure enough he liberates the object in question....but also finds a dead redhead and is caught with the proverbial smoking gun by those boys in blue, who are ready to book Bernie for Murder One!

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

'Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn't have to try for hipness, because hip is in the very air he breathes. The Burglar is just adorable. He is cute without being cuddly, he is witty without looking like he's striving for it, and he is rakish without possessing a single mean streak in his lithe and sinuous body. And his language - I suppose we should say Lawrence Block's language - is dry and droll and elegant, like how Dashiell Hammett would write if he was still doing the Thin Man books today.' - The Guardian

'Fast, Funny, Terrific' - Ed McBain

"An incorrigibly adorable thief" - New York Times

"Excellent N.Y. background and unusual characters make Block a detective writer to savour" - London Daily Mirror