The Thief

Author Fuminori Nakamura
Narrator Charlie Thurston
Publisher Blackstone Publishing
Run Time 4 hours and 1 minute
Format Audio
Genre Crime and mystery fiction, Thriller / suspense fiction.

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What to expect

The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections … but he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.

Critics Review

“A minimalist sliver of Tokyo noir…An intelligent, compelling, and surprisingly moving tale, and highly recommended.”
The Guardian (London)
“Strangely, compulsively readable for its portrait of a dark,
crumbling, graffiti-scarred Tokyo—and the desire to understand the mysterious
thief.”
Booklist
“More Conrad than Connelly…A breath of fresh air for readers looking for something beyond the procedural.”
Time Out Chicago
“I defy you not to finish the book in a single
sitting.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
“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.”
Wall Street Journal
“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.”
Daily Beast
“I was deeply impressed with The Thief. It is fresh.”
Kenzaburō Ōe, Nobel Prize–winning author
“Fast-paced, elegantly written, and rife with
the symbols of inevitability.”
ForeWord
“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.”
Out of the Gutter
“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.”
International Noir Fiction
“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.”
Publishers Weekly
“Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime
fiction, The Thief resonates even
more as a treatise on contemporary disconnect and paralyzing isolation.”
Library Journal

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