TO CATCH A THIEF is David Dodge's most famous novel, and rightly so. Alfred Hitchcock firmly cinched its place in the annals of crime fiction by adapting it into an Academy Award winning film starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. The story centers on John Robie, American expatriate and skilled gymnast, who once-upon-a-time was Le Chat, the famous and elusive cat burglar who worked the South of France. The legend of Le Chat grew with each crime. Following the war, Robie retires to a quiet life in France and vows to leave his past behind. His retirement is shattered when a copy-cat burglar commits a string of robberies that puts the police on Le Chat's trail again. Robie must catch the phony Le Chat before the police catch him. The Bruin Books edition of TO CATCH A THIEF is the first publication of the novel in many years and includes an introduction by Randal S. Brandt and afterword by Jean Buchanan. At last this beloved mystery is back in print.
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Glamorous and exciting,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: To Catch A Thief (Paperback)
David Dodge first made his way into my consciousness in July 2010 by the reprint of his first novel, _Death and Taxes_. It was unexpectedly charming, witty, and satisfying--unexpected because I had never even *heard* of David Dodge, and was only introduced to him and alerted to this reprint series by a friend.
_To Catch a Thief_, the next in what I hope will be a long line of David Dodge reprints by Bruin Books, is set in the post-WWII Riviera. John Robie is an expatriate American who has "retired" to the life of a gentleman farmer in the Côte d'Azur. Robie has some secrets, though, that if exposed, could land him back in a French prison; he is on an unofficial and uneasy reprieve for jewel thefts committed before the war, before he joined the French Maquis (anti-occupation guerrilla fighters). He needs to expose, and soon, the copy-cat burglar whose exploits threaten to send him and his compatriots back to prison. This is the novel upon which the famous Hitchcock film was loosely based. For David Dodge, a California tax accountant turned novelist and travel writer, this was his most financially successful novel. The protagonist John Robie is by turns a fascinating and infuriating character, as are several of the other main characters. Robie eventually understands his own irrational rejection of the trust of good friends by realizing that being a thief is a "state of mind," which stays with him even when he is no longer thieving. Will he overcome that mental and emotional limitation? Will he decide to trust his honest friends? Will he see love staring him in the face before it's too late? These questions, as much as finding out who has been successfully imitating Robie's earlier felonious feats, easily consumed me until the last page (despite my own confident--and utterly erroneous--assurance that I knew the identity of the thief quite early on). I've written this review through the point of view of the woman I am, focusing on relationships, dialogue, and plot. I confess that the roof-chasing scene was as tedious to me as are car-chasing scenes in movies, but which I mention because there seems to be something for everyone: action, history, relationships, motivations, secretive manipulations, and exhilarating <for some> chases. It doesn't have quite the fresh wit and laugh-out-loud moments of Dodge's _Death and Taxes_, but makes up by immersing the reader in the world of the fabulously rich, as well as the rough but engaging world of the French underworld and WWII freedom fighter. This edition has a lot going for it. First and foremost, we have to thank Bruin Books for reprinting a title (and an author) that has long been out of print. Randal S. Brandt writes a deliciously enticing and informative introduction. The margins are generous and the font easy-to-read. Suggestions for improvement: print on acid-free paper, and make available in a Kindle edition. The downside of this edition are the number of typographical errors, most of which appear to result from inattentive editorial review of scanned text subjected to optical character recognition. The large majority consists of random punctuation (e.g., "In the winter, he wore all the clothes; he could put on"), unnecessarily hyphenated words (e.g., "bag-gage"), and a few out-and-out misspellings (e.g.,"desk" instead of "deck"). These errors do not however significantly detract from reading pleasure. If you saw the movie _To Catch a Thief_; if you enjoy novels in exotic places; if you like glamour and sophistication and clever criminals; if you like an absorbing but not overwhelming plot; if you like good dialogue, good character development, and a good ending; then you must read Dodge's To Catch a Thief. You don't have an excuse any more.
3.0 out of 5 stars
How Hollywood turned an ordinary crime thriller into a silk purse,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: To Catch A Thief (Paperback)
Not a bad read. It has the weakness most crime thrillers suffer of the characters being two dimensional - no depth. He does generate a real familiarity with the location and the chase scene over the roof is detailed, plausible and exciting. Of course the real interest is the comparison with the film. The film is better by a fair margin. Much wittier and more glamorous. Cleaver lines "do you prefer the leg or the breast", "tell me what do you hope to get out of being so nice to me" and "o'mother will love it up here" have been added by the Hitchcock team. But they had hindsight and Carey Grant, David Dodge only had his wife for support. Dodge says after a cat burglary in the mansion next door, the story just wrote itself: "the quickest 80,000 words I have ever written". Though it later made him a millionaire thanks to the movie at the time of writing it was just a pot boiler to make quick money.
5.0 out of 5 stars
glad to see this in print again at last,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: To Catch A Thief (Paperback)
As a fan of the movie version, I'd been searching for a copy of To Catch a Thief for years. I'm thrilled to finally own the novel and found not only the story itself entertaining, but the additional information of David Dodge's life in France and the search for the location of his rented villa intriguing as well.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
