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Ron Peters's Reviews > The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam
The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam (Good Thief's Guide, #1)
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I wanted to read a novel set in Amsterdam, so I picked this up. Ewan’s descriptions of Amsterdam are, in fact, very nondescript: “He walked past the Van Gogh Museum,” approximately that exciting.
The protagonist writes mystery novels and is a thief on the side. He keeps a copy of Dashiel Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon on display as he writes. His relationship with his book agent – casual superiority on his side, snappy repartee on her side – is reminiscent of Hammett. One character even reminded me of Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 film version of The Maltese Falcon. But the ending of the book – in which our hero rather smugly explains what happened to a room full of the book’s major characters over multiple chapters – is pure Agatha Christie, possibly with a little Scooby-Doo thrown in. The overall tone of the book, despite mild allusions to the American hardboiled tradition, is very British.
The protagonist writes mystery novels and is a thief on the side. He keeps a copy of Dashiel Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon on display as he writes. His relationship with his book agent – casual superiority on his side, snappy repartee on her side – is reminiscent of Hammett. One character even reminded me of Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 film version of The Maltese Falcon. But the ending of the book – in which our hero rather smugly explains what happened to a room full of the book’s major characters over multiple chapters – is pure Agatha Christie, possibly with a little Scooby-Doo thrown in. The overall tone of the book, despite mild allusions to the American hardboiled tradition, is very British.
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