writer plans jewel heist - forced to go t/ with it - good

A mystery writer turns thief and plans a multi-million-dollar heist. A fortune in jewels. A lifetime of leisure. A make-believe caper that turns horribly and murderously real. It's the "perfect crime" -- and Lawrence Sanders's most playfully spellbinding thriller.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Caper by Lawrence Sanders is exactly what the name implies. Sanders is a prolific writer. Although this book was written a long time ago, and there are obvious dated areas in terms of clothing and slang, and a LOT of hard drinking and cigarette smoking. However, it's not hard to push all that aside and focus on the story. A woman writes mystery novels using men's pseudonyms. But, after awhile the books stop selling. Her agent and publisher suggest she has lost touch with reality. So, in an effort to make her books more realistic, she goes undercover with a good friend and commissions actual criminals to pull off a jewelry heist, all the time planning to pull out before the robbery actually takes place. Naturally, things don't turn out as planned. The first part of the book involved the planning of the heist. Then things go awry. From that point the book started to take on a different dimension. For me, this part of the book lagged and grew a bit dull at one point, and there were some situations I felt uncomfortable with and since it didn't really enhance the book, it could have easily been left out. Finally, it all comes down to the nitty gritty and a final showdown. The ending was perfect. My husband and I like to "buddy" read a book together. This is sometimes hard because our taste in books are so different. So, when I found a handful of Lawrence Blocks books at a library sale a few months ago, I thought these would be books we both might enjoy. Sure enough, my husband really liked this one. The pressures on an author to appeal to a mass audience , to be entertaining, yet realistic at the same time and having agents, managers, publishers and the fickle public all adding their expectations into the mix was handled with a great insight and humor. I doubt all that has changed much since this book was published except maybe that it's only gotten harder.The planning of the heist was also very clever and well thought out. The high people feel while going through the process of committing a crime, especially by those that have felt like they have only been going through the motions was also interesting.The second half of the book deals with the aftermath of committing a crime. As I said before, there were lots of areas in this section that could have been left out without damaging the story. However, there was a bit of a Bonnie and Clyde feel to this part of the book and it also had it's high points.I enjoyed this book enough that I would like to read some other Lawerence Sanders backlist.Don't be put off by an older copyrighted book. Sometimes you do come across a real stinker, but mostly I am just as happy with these older books as I am with newer books. Overall this one gets a B+ ( )

A detective writer decides to learn about crime in reality and plans a jewel theft. From this all sorts of things happen. Lawrence Sanders is the author writing under a pseudonym here. ( )