Customer Reviews

The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First Sentence: "I want you to steal something for me."

Charlie Howard is a suspense writer. He is also a thief. Charlie is approached by an American who offers him 20,000 euros to steal to monkey figurines from two different men on the same night. Charlie declines but, liking a challenge, decides to go ahead. He finds the first monkey but is interrupted by another, less subtle burglar, while looking for the second. When he returns to the American, he finds him beaten and near death. Charlie is arrested but released and determined to find the Three Wise Monkeys and the secret behind them.

Ewan begins with a very good, intriguing opening chapter and a delightful writing style and voice. Charlie is a likeable, albeit crooked, character and I appreciated the back story Ewan provided. I also enjoyed the discussions Charlie had with his agent in London, Victoria. They've never met; she thinks he looks like his jacket cover photo. Their relationship reminded me of the Richard Diamond television series from the late 1950's and his conversations with Sam (voice of Mary Tyler Moore) whose legs where the only thing you saw.

All of Ewan's characters were well done. Ewan's voice is one wry humor but never out of place. He takes the characters and the action seriously. His sense of place was not as strong as I might have liked, although it did improve as the story went on.

What I didn't particularly care for, or is not my preferred style, was the round-up-all-the-players-and-expose-the-truth, ending. It took away from a story that, up to that point, had been very well plotted and filled with unexpected twists right up to the ending.

Overall, it was a clever, enjoyable book.

THE GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM (Trad. Mys/Anti-Hero-Charlie Howard-Amsterdam-Cont) - G+

Ewan, Chris - 1st in series

Minotaur Books, 2009, Trade paperback - ISBN: 9780312570828

I read a ton of mystery novels. It's very rare that I feel I have uncovered a "new voice", or a fresh premise. The main character is flawed but likeable, the plot is intriguing and tight, and the pacing is perfect. After I read it, I immediately went online to find out if "The Good Thief's Guide to Paris" was out yet - finally, it is! Fans of Craig Johnson and other "self-deprecating hero with a sense of humor" novels will enjoy this. Having visited Amsterdam, it was also fun to picture the scenes in various places as they were "painted" by the author and my own memory.

I found this story to be really a fun read, a good whodunit that doesn't get too complicated or cumbersome. It reads quickly but not at the expense of being too elementary or simplistic. The events are narrated in the first person by the protagonist, an author by day and a self-trained thief when it suits him. In addition to the entertaining story, Ewan makes good use some wry and sarcastic humor displayed by our author/thief. I also liked his laid-back demeanor and persona. Ewan makes it all fit together very well and those bits of humor along with the plot twists and turns keep the reader turning the pages. There is, however, not a classic "good vs. evil" in this story, as most all of the characters live on the shadier side of life. Ewan's use of Amsterdam and it's world-famous diamond trade, as well as its neighborhoods and references to some Dutch cultural nuances and mannerisms, lent this story authenticity. It was clear the author has spent time in Amsterdam and is acquainted with the Dutch people and culture. He used his knowledge well to support the story.

Charles Howard is the successful author of a suspense series starring a suave courageous cat burglar detective, Faulks. However, fiction imitates real life as Charles supplements his income and creative juices by being a successful burglar just like his Faulks is.

Howard is currently completing his latest Faulks thriller in Amsterdam when on his web site he receives an enigmatic summons that peaks his interest. He meets with an American who knows the truth about Howard's moonlighting extravaganza; the American offers him 20,000 Euros to steal two monkey figurines. Reluctantly, as he wonders how his client knows the truth about his nocturnal activities, he carries out the assignment. However, when he returns to deliver the items, he finds his client almost dead from a vicious assault and the matching third figurine missing. As the Dutch police investigate the beating with Howard as a suspect, he makes inquiries that link back to a diamond robbery over ten years ago while his London based editor suggests plot changes, not realizing her recommendations might be tested in real life not a novel.

THE GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM is a humorous crime caper that pays homage to the classic To Catch a Thief, but does so in a lighthearted satirical tongue in cheek way. Charles is a unique impish rogue who finds himself in a dangerous encounter with a killer. The subplot involving his editor is creative and amusing as she offers advice to make his latest story line seem plausible and genuine, but not understanding that the escapade is real. Readers will enjoy this fine look at Amsterdam through the eyes of a cat burglarizing author struggling to keep his nine lives in tact.

Harriet Klausner

Charlie Howard is both a thief & a writer. No, it's not ridiculous. It's different & very well done.

The little caper has Charlie, an Englishman, in Amsterdam trying to tie up a loose end on his book. While there he surprisingly gets contacted by an American unknown to him. He's asked to steal something & the story takes flight.

It's light, it doesn't bog down. It's descriptive without using a ton of unnecessary dialogue. Charlie becomes the chief suspect in the caper & is driven to find the truth.

Charlie does make a much better thief & sleuth than a writer. The end is reminiscent of many of the old whodunits where Charlie has eight suspects gathered around in the ruins of a building. While he has his audience he explains the solution to the caper & who the murderer is. The ending is laid out & unfolds very well. The author has all his bases covered.

After a very good ending, you come across the last chapter, which is more or less an epilogue. Charlie is now in Paris where a few more surprises await the reader.

It's well worth your time.

In this fun debut mystery, author Chris Ewan has created a British novelist and burglar named Charlie Howard. Charlie doesn't try to hide the fact that he still enjoys the thrill of breaking and entering into some poor victim's house, despite the fact that he now considers himself to be a mystery writer and has, sort of, given up a life of burglary to write fulltime.

Not yet making the Big Euros from writing, he is offered a lot of money to do what he does better than write...steal something. In this case, that something happens to be two of the Three Wise Monkeys (Speak No Evil - Hear No Evil). The third monkey (See No Evil) is in the possession of the man who hires him to get the other two. Thus begins the very entertaining and humorous GOOD THIEF'S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM.

Of course there are twists and turns and suspects galore along the way with a substory slipped in here and there about Charlie's problem with plotting his next book. Those of you who have read one or more of the other three GOOD THIEF books, will learn how Charlie began his early career in crime when he was just sixteen and a student at a posh boarding school, and why he semi-retired to become a writer of suspense books featuring a thief named Michael Faulks as the protagonist.

The only reason I gave this otherwise terrific book 4 and not 5 stars is, as other reviewers here have mentioned, the end of the book takes place in an abandoned factory building with all of the suspects gathered together to listen to Charlie, a la Hercule Poirot, piece together the whodunit parts of the puzzle. I was disappointed that the author couldn't have ended the book in a more interestingly original way. Still, I highly recommend Ewan's debut novel.

Charlie Howard is a British author of detective novels the continuing protagonist of which is a burglar. Strangely enough, Charlie Howard himself is also a burglar. He's not really a bad guy -- picking the locks to places where he oughtn't to be and taking things that don't belong to him just gives him a special thrill and also helps with his cash flow. He likes to live for awhile in the cities where his stories are set and just now he's wrapping up a book in Amsterdam. And then he's approached by an American who wants him to break into two homes and steal a small figurine from each -- the Three Wise Monkeys, in fact. Charlie is puzzled because they're made of plaster and obviously are intrinsically worthless. But he does the job anyway and then finds that the guy who hired him has been beaten senseless. And then things really start to get out of hand. Charlie is going to have to solve what becomes the American's murder in order to protect himself, both from the police and from the real killer. The plotting is pretty good and so is the character of Charlie, who tends to approach the case the same way he handles the construction of the plot in one of his novels. He even sets up a classic Detective Reveals All scene in the last chapter. As a first novel, this is a pretty good one.

However.

This book would really have benefited from the attentions of even a novice copyeditor. There are far too many weird constructions, peculiar usages, and just plain errors. Charlie says a number of times (intransitively) that he "was stood outside" some building or "was sat" in a chair. If that's a Brit idiom, I've never heard it before. On another occasion, he rather jarringly describes a damaged item as a "right off." ("Team" and "teem" aren't actually synonymous, either.) Nor can I quite visualize stepping "inside the threshold" of a door. He should also consult a grammar book regarding the use of commas to set off appositives and other phrases. There are at least a dozen more sloppy missteps like this and they're quite jarring to a reader who's paying attention. Finally, Charlie makes a point of not wanting anything to do with guns -- he's a burglar, not a heavy -- but as a writer of crime novels, are we seriously to believe he doesn't know that the rectangular thing inserted in the grip of an automatic pistol that holds the ammunition is called a "clip" and not a "cartridge"? Plus which, in the wrap-up scene in the warehouse, the automatic appears to have morphed into a revolver with a swing-out cylinder. And, yeah, Ewan also tends to simply over-write at times, to the point where the average creative writing teacher would call him on it -- but as this is a first novel, so I'll be lenient about his occasionally slightly magenta prose.

By the way, I've been reading this series out of order, and the third installment, set in Las Vegas, has none of the above noted problems, so it appears some editor was at least paying attention after the fact.

Pros: Ewan's a good writer. Excellent pace, doesn't spend too long on any one item, keeps switching it up. His dialogue is good and his main characters are entertaining and fairly realistic. He knows his locale well or has studied it in depth. It was quick and complete. In many ways this is a much better book than 3 stars....However.....

Cons: I really didn't care for the "magic bullet solution". I really prefer an Occam's razor solution...simple, straight forward and believable. The way Ewan had to connect together every last stich (wait, I think he missed a hang nail on the chief inspector) of information so that if fit into this incredible jigsaw puzzle just had me shaking my head.

Comment: I don't do detective mysteries very often, but the title caught my fancy so I tried it. I'll probably do one of his other books in the future at some time when I'm in a lull and need something different.

Comment: I do genealogy from time to time. What you learn is that sometimes information is just, well, information.....and sometimes its a part of the puzzle. I disagree that every piece of information given has to fit into the solution, which is what Ewan tried to do.

The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam (2007) introduces Charlie Howard, a professional thief who writes a mystery series about a professional thief. While in Amsterdam trying to wrap up the loose ends of his latest mystery (he can't figure out how to get a briefcase containing a severed hand to the right place), Charlie is hired by a mysterious American to steal two small monkey figurines. Then the American is killed, and Charlie is a suspect. This light-hearted caper novel is full of classic elements: a beautiful girl in distress, menacing thugs, stolen diamonds, and a group unveiling of the solution to the mystery.

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/E_Authors/Ewan_Chris.html

Diamonds, who has them and who wants to get hold of them, is central to this exciting debut novel by Chris Ewan, their origin fundamental to the dilemma that faces Charlie Howard, a mystery writer and part-time thief who is currently living in Amsterdam in the hope that the city will inspire him to sort out some of the plot problems that plague his current story.

Charlie is surely not your average thief. A man who despises guns and violence, Charlie has only taken to thieving so that he can earn that little bit of extra cash on the side, despite being a little tentative of the risks involved. Cautious by nature, Charlie is hesitant to take chances, even when a shady American contacts him via his web site, asking to meet him at a well-known café in central Amsterdam.

Charlie has no idea who the American is and has far less reason to trust him, but the lure of a new job is something that he's long since given up trying to fight. When the American hands Charlie, a plaster of Paris figurine of a monkey, and asks him to steal two more, one that covers his ears, and the other covering his mouth, Charlie is at first uncertain on whether or not to take him up on the offer.

All things considered, it is hard to imagine that the figurines are worth more than a handful of pounds or euros, but the American is determined that Charlie should be the one to do the job as both are in private dwellings, one in a houseboat, the other in an apartment, and therefore both will be relatively easy to steal. After initially saying no, Charlie decides that he can't really resist the challenge, especially as the American, Michael Park has guaranteed that no one will be home in the respective residences. T

The houseboat burglary goes well, but Charlie is unceremoniously interrupted when he's in the apartment just as he's holding the second precious monkey figurine in his hands. Forced to hide in the attic, while the intruder slashes all of the furniture, little does Charlie know, however, that this particular adventure into the world of petty thievery is going to become a lot more complicated than he first thought.

Figurines in hand, he arrives back at the Café only to be told by the blonde bartender Marieke that Michael Park has disappeared, taken by two men, one thin and one large. Charlie notices that Marieke's movements are rushed and she looks anxious and when he then shows her the figurine, her blue eyes surprisingly transfixed by the object. His suspicions are even further aroused when Park turns up beaten to death, perhaps an unsuspecting victim of a botched robbery.

Charlie has never played this game before and when he finds himself the chief suspect in Park's murder, he finds himself caught up in a cat and mouse game as he tries to thwart the lead Dutch police officer Inspector Burggrave, who has taken a severe disliking to him. Charlie's dilemma is further complicated by the arrival of two masked henchmen who are determined to get their hands on the precious figurines.

Of course, everyone is corrupt or ruined in Ewan's Amsterdam, the motive for Park's murder appearing to be illusive at best. But much needed help arrives in the form of overweight Englishman Henry Rutherford who arrives on the scene from the British Embassy and is determined to unlock the mystery of Park's past life. Holding on to the key pieces of evidence, the figurines, Rutherford appears as the affable and loyal lawyer, who helps Charlie unlock a dark secret involving a botched diamond robbery at a Dutch trading company called Van Zandt's where apparently Park once worked as a security guard and where he ultimately stole a fortune in prized stones.

It's not entirely surprising that The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam actually does read like a tour guide to this famous city, with Ewan evoking the chilly atmosphere, including the red light distracts, with the dance music pulsing out from the sex booths, the grandness of Central Station and the Damrak and bleak expanses of the eastern dock areas. All is a perfect fit for murder, thievery and double crossing treachery as Charlie, a burglar who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, races against the clock to figure out the secret of the set of figurines and who was really responsible for Park's death. Mike Leonard December 2007.