The best book I will read this year is Peter Spiegelman's Thick as Thieves.
I've been a fan of his for years, having read his Shamus-winning series with private eye John March. Thick as Thieves is, a step up from those, as hard to believe as that is.
Thieves tells the story of a group of high-tech con artists. Think of them as being a combination of Parker's crew and the Mission Impossible team. They're lead by Carr who took over from his mentor Declan, lost months before in another job. They're funded and helped by the mysterious and intimidating Mr. Boyce, and their targets are bad guys with lots and lots of cash - villains who can complain to no one when they're taken down and cash that, though it can be bulky, is often electronic. The heists must be well-planned and expertly executed. But there are problems.
"On his apartment's balcony, Carr switches to rum. He puts his bare feet on the railing and tilts back in his chair, and his thoughts skid like bad tires."
For one, Carr can't quite accept the events that lead to Declan's death. And the crew is not quite ready to accept Carr as the boss. Then there is the problem that Carr, as the story proceeds, isn't sure he can trust those with whom he is working, let alone that the plan he's constructed will work - what Declan used to call 'paranoid calculus', a neat phrase that captures the doubts that expand as the tension tightens. Not only does Carr need to pay attention to the ominous Boyce but also his near-albino hit-woman Tina. There's the handsome and volatile Latin Mike who is continually challenging him, good-old-boy Bobby who seems too casual for what is going on, computer-hacker Dennis who is described as being the color and thinness of a stalk of wheat, and then there is Valerie, the delectable, erotic and unfathomable Valerie, his lover who seems to be running schemes within schemes. Or is he just paranoid? He has to work with this crew but he can't find the ability to trust them.
Spiegelman has a talent for describing an aspect of a character in few words, but words that tell all: "He's pink from heat and from drink, and there are damp circles under the arms of his blue button-down shirt. His blazer hangs over his shoulders like a drowned thing." Carr, in recalling his mother as she was dying, thinks of her knitting: "...the pieces she made that were neither scarves nor hats, but simply long, dark panels. He remembers too the streaks of gray that appeared, overnight, in her black hair, and how her collarbones became so pronounced - the bones of a ship, laid bare by a storm." But besides his subtle and tasty writing, the plot of Thieves will screw you ever deeper into your couch as the 'paranoid calculus' screws the worries and doubts into Carr's head. There are pivots and screeching halts that you will not see coming and there are times, I can promise you, that you are certain you know what is coming and you will be staggered by how wrong you were. Thick as Thieves (Knopf hc, $24.95 - signed copies available!) will be released in late July. It was originally set to come out in May (it was in our Spring newsletter) with the title Circus Time - a much better title, less ordinary and more fitting to the action in Thieves. That was another of Declan's phrases. I would bet that Circus was Spiegelman's title and some genius in marketing insisted it be changed to the more bland and trite Thieves.
Ah well, don't judge a book by its cover or its title. But you can judge this book by its incredible quality, inexorable pace and deadly serious intensity and you will thrilled to have finish it.
Damn - what a book!
I hope he brings back Carr. I hope he brings back March, too. But, more than anything, I hope he brings out another book, and quickly.
Book of the year:
Peter Spiegelman’s Thick as Thieves.
- JB
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