I quite enjoyed Block’s later Bernie Rhodenbarr books — they were repetetive, but well-written and amusing. So I went ahead and bought all of his earlier Tanner books, and this is the second of those I’ve read.
And as before, he’s got the patter going, and it’s amusingly written.
But the book has the structure of suet pudding. Tanner meets one person, then flees the location, then meets another person, then flees the location, and that’s how it goes.
And that can be fine! It’s like a road movie kind of structure. But this one just wasn’t any fun. I got to page 150 and decided I didn’t give a fuck and put the book down, even if there were just 50 pages to go.
I sort of lost interest toward the end and stopped caring.
Which leaves me with the problem of what to do with all the other Tanner books I bought. Should I just drop them without even giving them a go? Hm… yeah, that other Tanner book I read was also pretty dire, so out they go.
The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep (1966) by Lawrence Block (buy new, buy used, 3.75 on Goodreads)