As someone who's always enjoyed Lawrence Block's short stories (he's hands down one of the best short fiction authors around), I've slowly been trying out his full-length novels. This one, originally published in 1977, just felt a little too outdated to me. And that's certainly not the fault of the author, but it was just too foreign to me as a reader living in 2019. A known cat burglar who's friendly with the cops because they know he's an honorable thief, the cheesy seduction scenes... overall this book does not age well and it was hard for me to get into it as a result. I still think Block is an incredible writer, but I probably won't be continuing on with the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, at least not the ones written in the 1970s and 80s.

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Created Nov 30, 2019 at 4:02pm • Submit your own review...