Customer Reviews

The Thief

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This is almost like a short story. I read it in about an hour or so. Polly steals things from people as revenge when they do mean things to her. I can't really tell you much more without giving away the entire plot. If you can get a copy of this inexpensively, I'd get it, expecially for a plane trip. A lot of the action takes place on an airplane. I could see this as an Alfred Hitchcock episode, if that gives you any help.

Rendell's The Thief starts of really, really well. In fact until half way through I was thinking to myself, this is one of the best short stories I've ever read. Polly, the main character as a child and young adult was a brilliantly written strong minded girl, who knew how to handle herself and gave those who deserved it, wether an aunt who humiliates and assaults her for not letting her children come out on top in pool games, a school bully or bad boyfriend, everyone got their comeuppance. Granted it was through stealing stuff but she was a young, you can't expect her to come up with grandeur plans of vengeance. So when she's now in her 20s for the second half of the story and has put her thieving and lying days behind her you'd expect she's still the same strong female character. However when she experiences a bully in the airport, who ends up in the seat beside her on a flight to New York who burns her with hot coffee she doesn't stand up for herself at all. Then the bully is also on the flight back and when a thieving opportunity comes up she takes it. Then the rest of the story instead of fully ensuring this guy gets him comeuppance she instead decides she'll return his possessions to him, including even ironing his clothes, the only problem is she doesn't want her boyfriend to find out. You can predict what the bully is going to do which is exactly what he does. However your just waiting for the brilliant minded Polly from the childhood days to emerge, instead the wussified adult version never lets her make an appearance.

The Thief, is part of the Quick Reads series of books to increase literacy levels by encouraging those who don't like to read beyond magazines and comic books to try fiction through cheap priced short story length fiction and non fiction. The first half of the story would definitely have achieved that, however the weak second half won't encourage much further short story reading.

Was very disapointed in this comic book novel-save your money and find a copy at a spring yard/garage sale-that's where mine's going-in the bargain bin.

Got this book at a very cheap price (about 3 dollars) a couple of years ago..it was given away as a gift at a dutch book-week a year or so previously. The price, the critic reviews, as well as the fact that a well-known and renowned dutch book convention would give away this book (they had given away books by mankell and other well-known & estblished writers in earlier years) made me buy. They wouldn't risk their reputation I thought.

In my opinion, they made a mistake. This book is, despite the price (it only has ninety or so pages at that), not worth the time spent at reading it. It ruined Rendell for me, although I have read nothing else from her, had however planned to, and believed this would be a good introduction. As another reviewer has said, it's about a girl/woman who steals things to avenge mistreatment by other people, and her bad conscience and internal blockades rule the most part of the story. This is not a book about a strong woman, rather the opposite. I would almost feel sorry for the main character, if her constant doubting, worrying, passiveness & inferiority complex weren't just all so psycho-silly.

There are far too many great female and male writers out there than that I would take a chance reading another Rendell.