Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling » (Reprint)

Lawrence Block is one of the most widely recognized names in the mystery genre. He has been named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and is a four-time winner of the prestigious Edgar and Shamus Awards, as well as a recipient of prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. He received the Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association—only the third American to be given this award. He is a prolific author, having written more than fifty books and numerous short stories, and is a devoted New Yorker and an enthusiastic global traveler.

Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone legit — almost — as the new owner of a used bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village. Of course, dusty old tomes don't always turn a profit, so to make ends meet, Bernie's forced, on occasion, to indulge in his previous occupation: burglary. Besides which, he likes it.

Now a collector is offering Bernie an opportunity to combine his twin passions by stealing a very rare and very bad book-length poem from a rich man's library.

The heist goes off without a hitch. The delivery of the ill-gotten volume, however, is a different story. Drugged by the client's female go-between, Bernie wakes up in her apartment to find the book gone, the lady dead, a smoking gun in his hand, and the cops at the door. And suddenly he's got to extricate himself from a rather sticky real-life murder mystery and find a killer — before he's booked for Murder One.

Publishers Weekly

Those who long for another new exploit of the immortal Bernie Rhodenbarr, Greenwich Village bookseller by profession and burglar by avocation, should be warned that their wait must be extended. For this is a reissue, after 17 years, of what was originally the third in the series. It's therefore likely to be a new pleasure to Rhodenbarr fans won over by his recent rebirth (The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart) and to fans of Block's Matt Scudder novels. In it, Bernie has just opened Barnegat Books, has just got to know his deeply endearing friend, the lesbian dog groomer Carolyn, and is pressed into service to steal a rare book, allegedly a lost anti-Semitic work of Rudyard Kipling. As usual, he finds himself saddled with a dead body and a maze of twisted motives. And also as usual, Block's stylish narrative flow, humor and pitch-perfect feeling for New York life make getting to the end much more fun than the ultimate solution of the mystery. Until then, it's unalloyed pleasureand, yes, we're ready for another new one. (July)