Okay, Bernie the burglar is good fun. He is also decidedly formulaic. This one wasn't exactly "just doing a favor for a friend" but he is still left in the room with a corpse and somehow is tagged as the logical suspect. This, as usual, leaves him in the position of having to solve the crime himself without access to his tools (in his apartment which is under surveillance). This also means that he is crashing with a woman. As I recall, the woman in the first book was a total stranger to him. This one is not, but Block dodges the inevitable affair and equally inevitable breakup this time by making the woman a committed lesbian (not one of those wishy-washy lesbians who will sometimes sleep with men).
Beyond that the criminal sequence in this book is so convoluted that it was rather difficult to follow. It centers around a rare (but not particularly valuable - and, I am quite certain, imaginary) volume by Kipling. Hence the title. Did I neglect to mention that Bernie is now a legitimate bookseller? Except for his hobby, burglary. I suppose he is a legitimate bookseller - and also a legitimate burglar as well. It's a little like Dunning's bookman series. Cliff Janeway becomes a bookseller, but he can't quite give up his previous profession - of course, he was a cop, not a crook, but you get the idea.
Back on point, this rivals Christie's Hercule Poirot stories for plethora of suspects - he even calls them all together for a Poirot-esque denouement. Enough about other writers and their detectives. I have been feeling that after a dose of Bernie I need to read one of Block's Matthew Scudder stories - so that will be coming up in the near future.
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