Bernie Rhodenbarr, bookseller and burglar (The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart, etc.), is one of Block's most stylish creations, and this new outing (there has been a reissue or two in recent years) is cause for rejoicing. This time, Bernie is off with pal Carolyn for a weekend at a pseudo-English manor in the wilds of New England. Bernie hasn't the usual salacious aims in mindCarolyn is a lesbian, after all, and the woman Bernie had wanted to take has just up and married someone elsebut there is a rare book he lusts for. Cuttleford House happens to contain an inscribed Raymond Chandler first edition. A huge snowstorm traps everyone at the manor and soon, as happens in the kind of Agatha Christie mysteries Block delights in poking fun at, people start dying mysteriously, one by one. The phone lines are cut; a rope bridge across the creek that is their only egress is gone; and residents are trapped with a murderer, or maybe more than one. It's delightful, lighthearted fun in which keen characterizations, effortlessly loopy dialogue and a narrative style like, well, clotted cream, combine for a rare treat. Bernie gets to say "I suppose you're wondering why I summoned you all here," as he lays out the full deviousness for the survivors. The tale is more ingenious than believable, but belief is not what the Burglar stories are all about. Pure pleasure is. (July)
The Burglar in the Library
Narrated by Richard Ferrone
Lawrence BlockUnabridged — 9 hours, 37 minutes
The Burglar in the Library
Narrated by Richard Ferrone
Lawrence BlockUnabridged — 9 hours, 37 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Book thief Bernie Rhodenbarr has his work cut out for him when, in the wake of a paralyzing winter storm, a body is discovered in the library of a bed-and-breakfast.
All princely burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr wanted was to steal off to the Berkshires for a romantic weekend with Lettice Runcible at the oh-so-English Cuttleford House, then to go home with a rumored Cuttleford book—a copy of The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler inscribed to Dashiell Hammett—that wasn't his. But things don't exactly work out that way. First off, Lettice announces that she can't go because she's getting married that weekend, and when Bernie handsomely adapts by bringing his platonic chum Carolyn Kaiser along instead, who should complete the fanciful assortment of guests at Cuttleford House but Lettice and her bridegroom? As for the library that Bernie hopes to plunder, it's got more foot traffic than the Library of Congress, even before the discovery of a guest's cooling corpse makes it the center of attention. The sedate country-house setting, the general jollity (the grue is leavened by a precocious ten-year- old and the casual slaughters of several victims who barely have names, much less faces), and, above all, the body-in-the-library scream Agatha Christie, but the killer's model seems to be Christie's darkest novel: And Then There Were None. The cut phone lines, the sabotaged snowblower, the ruined bridge to the outside world—all these retro trappings climax in a denouement (in the library, naturally) that must be one of the most deliriously overextended in the history of the genre.
Bernie, evidently recovered from his most recent folly (The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart, 1995), has a fine time mocking the conventions of Christie's bygone age. Fans who don't insist on plotting as tight as Christie's will enjoy themselves just as much as if it were her.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170446155 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
| Publication date: | 08/22/2008 |
| Series: | Bernie Rhodenbarr Series , #8 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
The Burglar in the Library
Chapter One
At three in the afternoon on the first Thursday in March, I got Barnegat Books settled in for the weekend. I dragged my table of bargain books inside, closed the door, and turned the cardboard sign in the window from Open to Closed. I ran the cash-register tape—the work of a moment, alas—and took the checks to my desk in the back room, where I filled out a deposit slip and prepared a mail deposit. I returned with a box a little over a foot in length. It was shaped like a little house in a child's drawing, peaked roof and all, with a handle where the chimney ought to be. I opened the hinged top, set it on the floor, and looked around for Raffles.
He was in the window, treating himself to a few rays. I called his name, which might have worked if he'd been a dog, but he's not and it didn't. Raffles is a cat, a declawed unmanned tailless gray tabby, and if he even knows his name he's not letting on. True to form, he didn't stir at the sound of my voice, but lay motionless in what little sunlight there was.
So I crumpled a sheet of paper, and that worked. We have a training ritual that involves my hurling paper balls for him to run down and kill. It probably looks like a game to the casual observer, but it's serious business, designed to sharpen his mousing skills. I guess it's working; I stopped finding gnawed book spines and suspicious organic matter on my shelves the day he moved in.
I threw the ball of paper and he was off and running. He had it before it stopped rolling, sank the memory of his claws deep into it, took it in his mouth, shook it fiercely to and fro, and left itfor dead.
A dog would have brought it back so I could throw it again. A cat wouldn't dream of it. "Good job," I said, and crumpled a fresh sheet, and he made another clean kill. I congratulated him again, prepared a third paper ball, and tossed it gently into the open cat carrier.
He looked at it. Then he looked at me, and then he looked at the floor.
A few minutes later there was a knock on my door. "We're closed," I called out without looking. My eyes were on Raffles, who had removed himself to an open spot in the Philosophy & Religion section, on the same high shelf with the bust of Immanuel Kant.
The knock was repeated, and so was my response. "Closed for the weekend!" I sang out. "Sorry!"
"Bernie, open the door."
So I looked, and of course it was Carolyn, looking larger than life in a down-filled parka. There was a suitcase at her feet and a frown on her brow. I let her in and she blew on her hands and rubbed them together. "I thought you'd be ready by now," she said. "We've got a train to catch, remember?"
"It's Raffles," I said.
"What about him?"
"He won't get in the cat carrier."
She looked at me, then at the cat carrier, then bent over to retrieve two paper balls from it.
"I thought maybe I could get him to jump in after them," I said.
"You thought that, huh?"
"Well, it was just an idea," I said.
"You've had better ones, Bern. Where'd he go?"
"He's sitting up there with the father of the categorical imperative," I said. "Which figures, because it's imperative that he get in the cat carrier, and he's categorically opposed to it. I don't know, Carolyn, maybe it's a mistake to take him. We're only going to be gone three nights. If I put out plenty of food and water for him, and leave the radio on to keep him company . . ."
She gave me a look, shook her head, sighed, and clapped her hands fiercely together, calling the cat's name in a loud voice. Raffles sprang down from his perch and flattened himself against the floor. If he'd lowered his center of gravity one more inch he'd have been in the basement.
She bent over, picked him up, and put him in the carrier. "Now you stay there," she told him, in a tone that brooked no argument, and snapped the lid shut to give him no choice in the matter. "You can't con them into it," she explained. "You have to get physical. Ready, Bern?"
"I guess so."
"I hope that coat's warm enough. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since lunch. And the forecast's calling for snow north of the city."
"It'll warm up," I said.
"You think so?"
"It's March already. I know the groundhog saw his shadow, but the extra six weeks of winter are almost up. Even if we do get a little snow, it won't stick around long." I took my suitcase in one hand and Raffles's carrier in the other and let Carolyn hold the door for me. Outside, I went through what you have to go through to close up a store in New York, hauling the steel gate across, fastening innumerable padlocks. These chores are best performed barehanded, and by the time I was done my fingers were numb.
"It's cold, all right," I admitted. "But we'll be cozy at Cuttleford House. Snow on the roof, a fire on the hearth—"
"Kippers for breakfast. Afternoon tea with cream and clotted scones." She frowned. "Is that right, Bern? Or should it be the other way around?"
"No, it's right. Kippers for breakfast, scones for tea."
"I know that part's right," she said. "It's just a question of which is supposed to be clotted, the cream or the scones, and I'm pretty sure it's the cream. 'Scones and clotted cream.' Yeah, that sounds better."
"Either one sounds good about now."
"And all those other great English dishes. Bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, toad-in-the-hole. What exactly is toad-in-the-hole, Bern, do you happen to know?"
The Burglar in the Library. Copyright © by Lawrence Block. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.Videos
