The Burglar in the Rye

by Lawrence Block Narrated by Richard Ferrone

Overview

Winner of multiple Edgar and Shamus Awards, Lawrence Block keeps fans guessing to the end with his rollicking Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries. In this diverting caper, full-time bookstore owner and part-time burglar Bernie tries to do the right thing for a new friend, only to find himself accused of some terrible wrongs.

All Bernie plans to do is steal some letters. A New York City literary agent is auctioning off her personal correspondence with enigmatic writer Gully Fairborn. Gully's attractive ex-girlfriend has asked Bernie to swipe the letters so she can return them to her old heartthrob. But when Bernie breaks in, the letters are missing, and the literary agent is in bed with no hope of waking up. With the police watching him very closely, Bernie relies on jiggers of rye and Caroline, his lesbian best friend, to sharpen his deductive skills and find the killer.

Narrator Richard Ferrone expertly guides you on a laugh-filled journey through the twists and turns of the clever plot.

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
July 1999

So this time Bernie's trying to steal the highly personal letters of an author before the author's agent can publish them.

Are you listening, Joyce "Just Putting My Kids Through College" Maynard?

If J. D. Salinger reads this novel, he's going to be one happy dude. Because he'll say, See what happens to people who sell the love letters of people they once knew intimately?

While The Burglar in the Rye isn't the exact equivalent of Joyce Maynard selling J. D. Salinger's letters at auction, it's close enough. Too bad ole J. D. doesn't know Bernie's phone number. He's in the book, J. D. Just look him up.

Anyway, in this here particular installment of the Bernie saga, author wants letters back, Bernie goes to offending party's office and finds offending party dead. I wonder if Block had any particular agent in mind when he killed this one off.

So Bernie has to solve a murder. And in the meantime meets all the strange and wonderful people only Bernie seems to meet while solving a murder. Most of them are funny; a few are sad-funny. Block gives even the walk-ons real lives. It's one of the things that makes him major.

This one seems more Nero Wolfe-ian than ever. It's a true head-scratching whodunit, with Block pulling more bamboozles and switchbacks and Mexican hat tricks than ever. It's one of the things that makes him so entertaining.

We have Carolyn, his gay friend, and even more important, we have Bernie's singularly oddball take on the city. A burglar looks at a city in a different way from the rest of us. Hiding places. Sumptuouslytemptingplaces to burgle. The weirdo you turn to while on the run from the city's finest. Block has a great and idiosyncratic take on the city. It's one of the things that makes him enduring.

I first read Bernie Rhodenbarr 20 years ago, and I'm not sick of him yet. I doubt I ever will get sick of him. Block seems to be at the pinnacle of his creative powers. And Bernie just keeps getting funnier and funnier and funnier.

—Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman's latest novels include Daughter of Darkness, Harlot's Moon, and Black River Falls, the latter of which "proves Gorman's mastery of the pure suspense novel," says Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. ABC-TV has optioned the novel as a movie. Gorman is also the editor of Mystery Scene magazine, which Stephen King calls "indispensable" for mystery readers.

Marilyn Stasio

...[A]mystery stuffed to the eyeballs with endearing oddballs....By the time this amiably amoral hero assembles all the interested parties for his droll summation (''I suppose you're wondering why I summoned you all here''), he has earned his teddy bear.
—The New York Times Book Review

Bob Smith

This is one great book- intriguing, delightful, suspenseful, laugh-out-loud wonderful.
— The Mystery Review

Kirkus Reviews

If you catch the allusion in Block's title, you're in just the right mood for Bernie Rhodenbarr's ninth spot of burglary-cum-detection. Alice Cottrell, a former teen prodigy who spent three of her Wonder years with Gulliver Fairborn, the famously reclusive American writer whose first novel changed the life of every teenager who read it, has hired Bernie to steal Gully's letters to Anthea Landau—the ex-agent who's about to put them up for auction even though Gully copyrighted them—so that Alice can protect her old mentor by destroying them. Bernie checks into Anthea's hotel (the seedy, genteel, splendidly evoked Paddington) breaks sedately into her room, and begins his search for the letters. But he has to leave half a step ahead of the law when he realizes that the reason Anthea isn't listening to his burglarious noises is that she's dead and the cops are knocking. Except for the corpse, this may sound as familiar as last week's literary gossip, but when Bernie stops to purloin a ruby necklace from another Paddington guestroom he passes through during his escape, he opens a whole new can of worms and unleashes a comic nightmare of collectors, scholars, spurned lovers, and garden-variety thieves. The shaggy mystery, which requires an even more hyperextended finale than The Burglar in the Library (1997), manages to honor most of the conventions of the formal detective story even while sending them all giddily up. And if Bernie Rhodenbarr weren't already irresistible, the Salinger/Maynard tie-in would hook the stragglers.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171254629
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	08/22/2008
Series:	Bernie Rhodenbarr Series , #9
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The Burglar in the Rye

Chapter One

The lobby was a bit the worse for wear. The large oriental carpet had seen better days, lots of them. The facing Lawson sofas sagged invitingly and, like the rest of the furniture, showed the effects of long use. They were in use now; two women sat in animated conversation, and, a few yards away, a man with a long oval face and a high forehead sat reading a copy of GQ. He wore sunglasses, which made him look dapper and sly. I don't know how they made the magazine look. Dark, I suppose.

While the lobby may have been the least bit down at the heels, the overall impression was not so much of shabbiness as of comfort. The glow of a fire in the fireplace, a welcome sight on a brisk October day, put everything in the best possible light. And, centered above the fireplace mantel, painted with such . . .

The Burglar in the Rye. Copyright © by Lawrence Block. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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