I have a weakness for funny movies about con men and audacious heists: The Italian Job (the new one), The Thomas Crowne Affair, Ocean’s Eleven, Catch Me If You Can etc. I haven’t read any books of the sort, as far as I can remember – until I read The Lies of Locke Lamora.
I found the book via the Stockholm SF bookshop’s listing of new books, totally unaware that it was voted the top SF book of 2006. I guess I should take a look at the rest of that list.
Locke Lamora is a thief who steals because he enjoys stealing and just plain likes to cause mischief. His career starts at the age of 5, and by the time he’s adult he is the head of a small gang of thieves. All the other gangs believe them to be normal small-time thieves, but in reality they plan and execute large and complex scams to trick the rich. The gang has amassed far more money than they can spend on anything, especially since they make sure to keep a low profile. Partway through the book Locke accidentally attracts the attention of the wrong kind of powerful people (who are also fighting each other) and spends the rest of the book struggling to survive.
Even though Locke is a thief, he’s got a strong moral sense and it is not at all hard to sympathise with him. It helps, of course, that he is daring and funny and inventive, has total confidence in his abilities, and always succeeds. Other characters get relatively little attention. Character isn’t the book’s strong side: it’s all about setting and plot.
The setting is the lively city-state of Camorr. It’s a fantasy city, but relatively similar to our world. It’s sort of a mixture of Venice and Sicily and Victorian London: highly-organised gangs of crooks in a city of islands and canals. Shark-infested canals. For local colour, add a dash of alchemy and a lot of violent entertainment.
The plot is tight and fast-paced. I found the beginning chapters a bit annoying because Lynch cuts frantically between Locke’s childhood and the present time. It was too chopped-up, MTV style, for my taste. I kind of got the impression that Lynch was unsure if he could keep the reader’s attention otherwise. (He shouldn’t have worried.) On the other hand, several reviewers really liked this structure.
The entire book is a page-turner, in the very best sense of the word. I could hardly put it down because I wanted to find out what would happen next – and it was always something inventive. The action got very violent and bloody in places, yet unlike Follett Lynch doesn’t go overboard when describing these scenes, and they do fit in with the general atmosphere and the plot. And he balances these scenes with with abundant humour.
He also adds some very nice details about the city and the society, and pays great attention to detail, making even the slower sections very interesting to read.
Some plot turns are a bit hard to believe: just as in heist movies, Locke succeeds and survives where he really shouldn’t, but that’s forgiveable because otherwise there wouldn’t be a sequel. But now a sequel is very obviously on its way: some issues that seem central to Locke’s life are left unexplained, and others will need resolving and avenging. Nevertheless the book is fully enjoyable on its own: where some books leave you hanging at the end, annoyed that the sequel isn’t available yet, this one just made me glad that I have more to look forward to.
My favourite passage, that excellently summarizes both the tone of the book and the character of Locke:
“Some day, Locke Lamora,” he said, “some day, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope that I’m still around to see it.”
“Oh, please,” said Locke. “It’ll never happen.”
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