The Burglar Who Met Frederic Brown

Bernie Rhodenbarr, Book 13

By: Lawrence Block

Narrated by: Richard Ferrone

Suppose you’re Bernie Rhodenbarr.

You’ve got a dream job, running your own cozy secondhand bookstore, complete with Raffles, your caudally challenged cat. It’s in Greenwich Village, and your best friend’s dog grooming salon is two doors away, and the two of you lunch together and meet for drinks after work.

And you’ve got another way to make a buck. Every once in a while you put your conscience on the shelf and let yourself into someone else’s residence, and you leave with more than you came with. You’re a burglar, and you know it’s wrong, but you love it.

And you’re good at it. You’ve got two ways to make a living, one larcenous, the other literary and legitimate, and you’re good at both of them.

Nice, huh?

Until the 21st Century pulls the rug out from under you. All of a sudden the streets of your city are so overpopulated with security cameras and closed-circuit TV that you have to lock yourself in the bathroom to have an undocumented moment. And locks, which used to provide the recreational pleasure of a moderately challenging crossword puzzle, have become genuinely pickproof.

Meanwhile, internet booksellers have muscled your legit enterprise into obsolescence. The new breed of customers browse your bookshop, find what they’re looking for, then whip out their phones and order their books online.

Wonderful. You had two ways to make a living, and neither of them works anymore.

But suppose you keep on supposing, okay?

Suppose you wake up one morning in a world just like the one in which you fell asleep—but with a couple of differences.

The first one you notice doesn’t amount to much. The Metrocard in your wallet has somehow changed color and morphed into what seems to be called a SubwayCard. That’s puzzling, but you swipe it at the turnstile same as always, and it gets you on the subway, so what difference does it make?

But that’s not the only thing that’s changed. The Internet’s up and running, as robust as ever, but nobody seems to be using it to sell books. Doors are secured not with pickproof electronic gizmos but with good old reliable Rabson locks, the kind you can open with your eyes closed. And what happened to all those security cameras? Where’d they go?

All of a sudden you’ve got your life back, and your bookshop’s packed with eager customers, and how are you gonna find time to steal something?

Well, just suppose one of the world’s worst human beings has recently acquired one of the world’s most glamorous gems. When the legendary Kloppmann Diamond is up for grabs, what can you possibly do but grab it?

And what could possibly go wrong?

©2022 Lawrence Block (P)2022 Recorded Books

Time Travel!!! Excellent!!

One of his Most Interesting stories he's every written! LOVED IT!! THANK YOU!! Would write more ..to crippled and ill.
Richard Ferrone makes all the characters so real!! Love Every Storry!!!!!!!

great fun

A bit of a silly romp as a likely send-off for Bernie and, sadly, Richard Ferrone. As always, the narration was perfect.

Fantastic!

As usual, Block’s Bernie is humorous, smart and so entertaining. The “mystery “ is smart, so much smarter than the others of this genre. As usual, I felt a bit sorry that the book had to end.

Bernie’s back!!

Not the best Rodenbarr book, but it’s so much fun seeing him and Caroline again, I can almost forgive the -was there actually a plot to this thing? -doesn’t really matter.

Bernie forever

Bernie Rhodenbarr is back and he’s got an itch to steal a diamond. Block brings back old favorites in this one and I’m so glad to see them. It feels a little bittersweet to hear Richard Ferrone giving life to Bernie now that he himself has died but there’s no one else I would’ve wanted to hear more.

Overall it’s different from what you might expect a Burglar tale to be but it worked for me.

A reasonably satisfying 'end' to the series

*Spoiler alert*

Was going to try to leave out some spoilers but would be hard to review without them.

Let me say that you pretty much have to treat the series as a comic strip where the characters never age and in full suspension of disbelief mode. Otherwise, the characters would all be geriatric, all the cats would have long since passed away, etc. This has never been more true than in this installment, which I am going to assume is probably the last, aside from maybe some future short novellas.

This has a serious twist compared to previous stories. Bernie and Carolyn find themselves in a parallel universe, apparently of their own willful choosing from the infinite possibilities. If only we could all have a vacation like this. At times I found myself wondering if they would find out in the end that they'd passed away and this was 'heaven'. In this new 'best of all possible worlds', there are no advanced locks or surveillance cameras, no ebay, no Amazon. A great world for an antiquarian bookseller and professional burglar. Favorite restaurants and bars that used to exist never closed. People from previous novels that passed away are alive and well, never having met their ultimate fate.. Cabs appear instantly when needed. All in all it's a farce, though I can't see how the author could have written a story set in modern times in the spirit of the previous novels and still keep it in NYC. Not that all of these aren't farces and should be enjoyed in this spirit. The story does not take itself too seriously.

The narrator does a fair job, though I feel like when Bernie is speaking, it's at the pace of and with the voice of an old man, and makes Bernie seem a bit tired, kind of marring the timeless aspect of the character. Voice inflections for other characters aren't bad. Some of the descriptions of things, people, and situations are very long-winded and some cliches and in-jokes aren't quite standing the test of time, though this is the author's fault and not the narrator.

All in all, a good story. Some weirdness. Carolyn and Bernie * * *. (I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader) Ray Kirschmann is a reasonably civil human being. The whole sci-fi alternate reality twist. If you take this as one last visit to Bernie's world, kind of a goodbye tribute album or as when a "made for TV movie" comes out to celebrate a series long past, you'll be fine.

more SF than a mystery

I have read all the Burglar Who.... books and this one was way different. This is a S. F. book.

really like the whole series

it's a good book great different from his usual ones but I can kind of see the leap to this I just don't know how I feel about Bernie and Carolyn in that one scene

Charmingly odd

Great characters, wonderful buddy relationship; witty, dry, literate, and such a grand romp that my mention of the somewhat weak ending, in terms of plot, is more of a precaution against your disappointment than it is any suggestion to give this book a miss. By all means, give it a try!

Not good

How to express my disappointment. I’ve read all the Bernie’s books and enjoyed them. This just wasn’t any good.