The Burglar In The Rye

Bernie Rhodenbarr, bookseller by day, burglar by night, is on the prowl again. Pretty Alice Cottrell has hired him to infiltrate the crumbling old Paddington Hotel and steal back the letters of reclusive author Gulliver Fairborn from his once-upon-a-time agent, who now wishes to sell them at auction. Seems like an easy enough job, until Bernie discovers the letters missing -- and the agent dead in her bed. With the police only footsteps behind him, Bernie's got to make a fast escape or take the rap for a murder he didn't commit.

Only then does Bernie begin to wonder if he's been set up by a criminal -- one who is almost as clever as he is.

Gulliver Fairborn's novel, "Nobody's Baby," changed Bernie Rhodenbarr's life. And now pretty Alice Cottrell, Fairborn's one-time paramour, wants the bookselling, book-loving burglar to break into a room in New York's teeth-achingly charming Paddington Hotel and purloin some of the writer's very personal letters before an unscrupulous agent can sell them. Here's an opportunity to use his unique talents in the service of the revered, famously reclusive author. But when Bernie gets there, the agent is dead . . . and Bernie's wanted for murder. (He "really" hates when that happens )

Perhaps it's karmic payback; Bernie "did" help himself to a ruby necklace on his way out. (But it "was" lying there. And he "is" a burglar.) Now he's in even hotter water. And he'll need to use every trick in the book--maybe going so far as to entice the hermitic Fairborn himself out of seclusion--to bring this increasingly twisted plot to a satisfying denouement.