The Burglar In The Rye
Michael Carlson

Of all the schizophrenic crime writers, Lawrence Block's personalities may be the most split. The gulf between his hard-boiled Matt Scudder and his parlour-sleuth Bernie Rhodenbarr is huge, even if Scudder seems to be mellowing as he settles into a sort of domestic bliss in Hell's Kitchen.

I've never been a huge fan of Bernie the book-dealing thief, for a few reasons. First, the characters all seem to exist to indulge in wordplay with each other, and they're all so facile it becomes difficult to tell them apart. The dialogue reminds me of plays by Ben Hecht or George S Kaufman, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but there isn't a lot of extra time available for characterization. There is, however, time for some of the minutiae of book dealing and collecting, and frankly, it bores me. As someone who reads, rather than collects, I can't get excited about signed first editions, and there are other book-dealing detectives who irritate me far more than Bernie does.

Having said that, however, this book plays on a literary conceit, using characters who are thinly disguised versions of JD Salinger, the famous reclusive novelist, and Joyce Maynard, the teenager elevated to media stardom by the New York Times in the early 70s, who married the much-older Salinger and has recently published a kiss and tell memoir ratting out the author of Catcher in the Rye. It won't be giving away too much to tell you that the Maynard character in Block's novel turns out to be almost as unpleasant as Maynard appears to be in real life, whatever reality may be to her.

My other problem with the Burglar books is the way Block loves the drawing room revelation scene, and constructs the Rhodenbarr books carefully to assemble all the characters for the denouement. In some of his stories, the solution has relied on Bernie, or his sidekick Carolyn the dog-grooming dyke, either knowing arcane information or not knowing simple things, usually both at the same time. In this volume, Block plays more fair with the reader, though the solution does require a leap of lesbian intuition which I'm surprised Bernie manages. I hate to say that if you like this sort of thing, you'll like this one, but Block writes so well I'm sure you will.

Posted at 12:00AM Monday 01 Jan 2007