Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Lawrence Block
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The only place I had to break into these days was the place where I was living."

No sophomore slump for Mr. Lawrence Block in his Bernie Rhodenbarr series. Two weeks ago I reviewed the second novel in the series, The Burglar in the Closet, and liked it about half a star more than the first installment, Burglars Can't Be Choosers (1977). But the first novel is also a good read and I recommend it for the prose and particularly for the plot.

We meet Bernie Rhodenbarr as he burglarizes an apartment in Manhattan and feels a "little surge of excitement" which always happens when he opens a lock. This burglary has been commissioned by someone who paid Bernie a thousand dollars up front and promised much more if he manages to steal a box covered in blue leather. Unfortunately for Bernie, but fortunately for the reader, the box is nowhere to be found. Instead, two policemen interrupt Bernie's escapade and there is another - rather grim - surprise.

Bernie manages to escape and hides in a friends apartment. He meets a young woman, Ruth, whom he fancies a lot:

"I watched her little bottom as she walked, and when she bent over to deposit the chicken bones in the garbage I got a lump in my throat, among other things.

The prose is fun to read until about middle of the book. Bernie's conversations with Ruth are really well written and the light sexual banter between them is full of first-class dialogue. Particularly the comparisons between burglary thrills and sexual ones. There is even a nice, subtly written sex scene.

Bernie is irresistible to women; since I have a life-long experience of being utterly resistible, I am envious of him. On the other hand, similarly to him I have some knowledge of Victorian erotic literature: when he explains the meaning of the word 'gamahouche' to another character I remembered how I inquired about that word some time around 1965, when I read such literature for the first time (and when it made so much sense). Getting an answer was not easy, 30 years before Google.

Unfortunately for me, the quality of the prose deteriorates about mid-book, and the author focuses on the story. Readers who enjoy mystery books for their plot will be happy here: the plot is well structured and has variously-sized nice twists. In some way the denouement reminds me of classical mysteries. Some humor makes appearance again at the end.

Good read!

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

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