“A minimalist sliver of Tokyo noir…An intelligent, compelling, and surprisingly moving tale, and highly recommended.”

“Strangely, compulsively readable for its portrait of a dark,
crumbling, graffiti-scarred Tokyo—and the desire to understand the mysterious
thief.”

“More Conrad than Connelly…A breath of fresh air for readers looking for something beyond the procedural.”

“I defy you not to finish the book in a single
sitting.”

“We get all the way to page 53 of…before we learn the name of its protagonist narrator…By then a reader may feel no special need to know what this nervy fellow is called, so well has Mr. Nakamura caused us to view the world through the thief’s hypersensitive mind.”

“His grasp of the seamy underbelly of the city
is why Nakamura is one of the most award-winning young guns of Japanese
hard-boiled detective writing.”

“I was deeply impressed with The Thief. It is fresh.”

“Fast-paced, elegantly written, and rife with
the symbols of inevitability.”

“More than a crime novel, The Thief is a narrative that delves
deep into the meaning of theft and the nature of justice…Japanese crime fiction
has a new star.”

“The drily philosophical tone and the noir
atmosphere combine perfectly, providing a rapid and enjoyable ‘read’ that is
nonetheless cool and distant, provoking the reader to think about (as much as
experience) the tale.”

“Compelling…Nakamura’s memorable antihero, at once as believably
efficient as Donald Westlake’s Parker and as disaffected as a Camus
protagonist, will impress genre and literary readers alike.”

“Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime
fiction, The Thief resonates even
more as a treatise on contemporary disconnect and paralyzing isolation.”