The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (Volume 11)
Block fans who feared the Bernie Rhodenbarr series was finished will rejoice to see that the bookseller-thief lives to steal again! All the usual suspects are back—Bernie; his lesbian sidekick, Carolyn; and his nemesis/friend, NYPD cop Ray Kirschbaum—and all are in fine fettle. The plot wanders a bit—from a Fitzgerald manuscript through a dead dowager and on to a whole bunch of rare buttons—but if it’s the charismatic Bernie doing the wandering (and peppering his peregrinations with puns of the biblio variety), who really cares? Certainly not anyone who has made Bernie’s acquaintance in any of his 10 previous adventures. And, besides, if the multistranded plot seems to be unraveling along the way, it makes the signature finale (borrowed, of course, from Nero Wolfe), when Bernie gathers all the suspects at his bookstore and reveals who dun what, all the more satisfying. Does Block’s decision to self-publish Bernie’s latest under his own LB imprint suggest that more will be on the way, or that this single LB title will become a bibliographic rarity of special interest to Block collectors (and even, possibly, to a thief with Bernies literary tastes)? --Bill Ott