Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Bookseller and New-Yorker-to-the-bone, Bernie Rhodenbarr rarely ventures out of Manhattan, but he's excited about the romantic getaway he has planned for himself and current lady love Lettice at the Cuttleford House, a remote upstate b&b. Unfortunately, Lettice has a prior engagement—she's getting married . . . and not to Bernie—so he decides to take best buddy Carolyn instead. A restful respite from the big city's bustle would be too good to waste. Besides, there's a very valuable first edition shelved in the Cuttleford's library that Bernie's just itching to get his hands on. Did we neglect to mention that Bernie's a burglar?
But first he's got to get around a very dead body on the library floor. The plot's thickened by an isolating snowstorm, downed phone lines, the surprise arrival of Lettice and her reprehensible new hubby, and a steadily increasing corpse count. And it's Bernie who'll have to figure out whodunit . . . or die.
Synopsis
Bookseller and New-Yorker-to-the-bone, Bernie Rhodenbarr rarely ventures out of Manhattan, but he's excited about the romantic getaway he has planned for himself and current lady love Lettice at the Cuttleford House, a remote upstate b&b. Unfortunately, Lettice has a prior engagement—she's getting married . . . and not to Bernie—so he decides to take best buddy Carolyn instead. A restful respite from the big city's bustle would be too good to waste. Besides, there's a very valuable first edition shelved in the Cuttleford's library that Bernie's just itching to get his hands on. Did we neglect to mention that Bernie's a burglar?
But first he's got to get around a very dead body on the library floor. The plot's thickened by an isolating snowstorm, downed phone lines, the surprise arrival of Lettice and her reprehensible new hubby, and a steadily increasing corpse count. And it's Bernie who'll have to figure out whodunit . . . or die.
Publishers Weekly
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)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
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)Library Journal
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.Kirkus Reviews
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.