Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Good Thief's Guide To Vegas-Chris Ewan

The Good Thief's Guide To Vegas
Chris Ewan
Minotaur, Aug 17 2010, $24.99
ISBN: 9780312580827

British author Charlie Howard makes more money as a sophisticated thief. He and his writing agent Victoria visit Las Vegas. There they meet magician Josh Masters, who is performing as the star attraction at the Fifty-Fifty casino on the Strip and apparently attracted to Victoria.

Charlie decides the obnoxious magician needs a lesson for his designs on Victoria so he plans to rob $60,000 in chips from his intended victim’s hotel safe. Everything goes according to the good thief’s plan until he sees a corpse in Masters’ bathtub. During a performance, Masters performs a perfect disappearing act while the casino owners demand Charlie fork over the chips.

The latest Good Thief Guide thriller (see Paris and Amsterdam) is a delightful crime caper in which everything goes Murphy (wrong) for the urbane title character. Charlie is a combo antiheroic hero whose latest escapades have as always led to him into trouble from all sides of the trapezoidal law. Fans will enjoy Charlie’s humorous lighthearted misadventures on the Strip as he muses that last week (previous tale) he saw the Eiffel Tower in Paris and this week he sees the Eiffel Tower in Vegas; both visits having in common someone wanting to roll a snake eyes of him from the top.

Harriet Klausner

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