ABOUT THE BOOK

Bernie Rhodenbarr - a romantic? Hey, even burglars fall in love and in this case it's Bernie doing the falling, with the lovely and alluring Ilona. Night after night, sharing popcorn in the flickering shadow of a Bogie movie, Bernie finds himself tongue-tied - sometimes literally. It would appear Ilona's now doing all the stealing. Well, not really. Bernie's been approached by the oddly named Hugo Candlemas to pilfer a posh East Side apartment, make off with the portfolio and collect a fast, easy sum. A reasonable enough request for a trained burglar, sure, but just when things are going well, things turn bad.

Praise for Lawrence Block

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

"An incorrigibly adorable thief" - New York Times

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

For clean close-to-the-bone prose, the line goes from Dashiell Hammett to James M Cain to Lawrence Block. He's that good. - Martin Cruz Smith