The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (A Bernie Rhodenbarr Mystery) (Paperback)

So much for explaining the concept of the series. The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling is the third book in the series. I strongly suggest that you begin the series by reading Burglars Can't Be Choosers and follow it up with The Burglar in the Closet. Each story in the series adds information and characters in a way that will reduce your pleasure of the others if read out of order. Although, I originally read them out of order and liked them well enough. I'm rereading them now in order, and like it much better this way. The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza comes next in the series.

The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling introduces two major changes into the series, both of them favorable. Bernie is now the proprietor of Barnegat Books in Greenwich Village, which features used hard cover books, some of which are collectibles. After one of his big heists, he has enough to buy the store, which he used to patronize. The former owner heads off to Florida, leaving Bernie with something to do with his spare time. In this book, Bernie mainly spends his time in the store reading. He's not quite sure whether he makes any money or not, but he likes being around the books . . . and he hopes to meet interesting women. With this change, the series shifts to having a bookish angle that I find delightful.

The second major change is that Bernie now has a friend, Carolyn Kaiser, who provides an offbeat offset to Bernie's burglaries. She runs The Poodle Factory, where she grooms dogs for a living (while preferring cats in her private life). She and Bernie share lunches, dinners, drinks and good times together. But it's not boy and girl. Carolyn's romantic interests don't run toward men. As a result, you get a sort of Nick and Nora Charles element without the sexual element affecting the couple. It works really well. Mr. Block successfully experimented with having a female sidekick for Bernie in The Burglar in the Closet, but the romantic development showed that it would be hard to sustain in subsequent books so he wisely ended that relationship. This one, on the other hand, can be easily sustained based on mutual interests and friendship.

As the book opens, Bernie's trying to convince everyone that he's gone straight, including his crooked cop friend, Ray Kirschmann, who wants to hire Bernie to lift a mink coat for his wife. Then Bernie gets an invitation to lunch at an exclusive club and learns about a rare and obscure work of Rudyard Kipling's with an anti-Semitic slant that someone wants stolen. Bernie can't resist, and the fun begins! Although the burglary is difficult enough, the aftermath soon has Bernie on the run. Carolyn's pressed into helping him, and the misunderstandings and confusion quickly mount. The puzzle's a deliciously complex one, and you'll enjoy seeing unraveled by Bernie (with a little help from his burglar's tools). You'll find the puzzle to be a nice step up from the ones in the first two books in the series. This is definitely a five-star effort and promises many good things to come.

This book's theme comes down to things not always being as they seem. I came away starting to question a lot more of my assumptions about whether appearances are honest representations of reality.

Look hard for the Potemkin village, wherever you are or whatever you are doing!