The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling by Lawrence Block
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"I'd prefer to live as a honest man among honest men, but I haven't yet found an honest pursuit that lets me feel this way. I wish there were a moral equivalent of larceny, but there isn't. I'm a born thief and I love it."

Unfortunately, Lawrence Block's third entry in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979), does not reach the same level of literary quality as its two predecessors ( Burglars Can't Be Choosers and The Burglar in the Closet ). It gets a marginal recommendation from me, though, because of the clever setup, some humor, and many passages of Mr. Block's witty, stylish prose.

In quite an amusing beginning chapter, Bernie, the owner of a used bookstore, catches a book thief and tells him that he "is too dumb to steal." Bernie will regret this quip later. Early on we meet the supporting characters in the series - Carolyn, the lesbian dog groomer, and Ray Kirschmann, "the best cop money can buy." We also accompany Bernie on his real job, that is burglary.

It soon becomes obvious that the two threads - Bernie's burglary and the attempted theft - are connected: the author unveils a tremendously complicated plot. Way too complicated for this reviewer: I have lost track of (and interest in) what's going on pretty early and continued reading only to look for occasional pearls of Mr. Block's prose and humor. The bit about the "little Dutch boy," the patron of lesbians, is funny. As is the somewhat meta-literary passage about Bernie's erstwhile fellow inmate who enjoyed a particular bit in a crime story

"[...] where Parker settled the score with an unworthy fellow laborer by breaking three important bones [...] It was the adjective that did it for him, the idea of deliberately breaking important bones."

Bernie is drugged, some characters are left "with more than the traditional number of holes in [...] head," Carolyn is helping the bookselling burglar in his pursuits, yet the latter part of the novel is markedly weaker than the first 70 or so pages. Too much happens, there is too much dialogue and the author does not give enough attention to what he is best at - the witty prose.

I much dislike the setting of the denouement in the Nero Wolfe style. True, there are some similarities between Bernie R. and Archie G. (I wish someone could write a story that would allow them to meet), but I do not think that the setting fits Mr. Block's style. Also, the appearance of the name of a certain Adolf H. seems to be a miss.

Quite readable at the beginning, then much less so.

Two-and-a-quarter stars.


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