Rating: 
Summary: More of the Bernie you know..
Review: Bernie Rhodenbarr, book store owner and part time robber, can't help the impulses and urges that get keep him in the headlights of the local law enforcement. Everyone who's anybody knows that Bernie is never completely out of the game, and when the request comes from a friend to clean out the wall safe of an established rogue, it is not that hard a decision to make. Success comes with careful planning, so prior reconnaissance of the site is a must. But perhaps not a terribly good idea to make an unplanned stop while doing a little forward scouting for the job.
The impulse stops comes in the form of an unknown woman's apartment, and while it was a good idea at the time of entry it rapidly ceases to be so. The occupant returns and Bernie finds himself hiding under the bed, listening to a rape in progress. While it has a bit of a grim beginning, the blip on the morality radar is smoothed over and the story introduces a cast of thousands all somehow connected with a double murder committed in the neighbourhood Bernie is caught appraising on street security cameras. Wrong man, wrong time and Bernie is once again in the thick of it.
"Burglar on the Prowl" is the tenth entry in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series. The self-deprecating wit of Bernie the burglar is the main appeal of this novel, and while the resolution is quite masterful in its complexity, you might find its method of delivery all a bit too hard and serious to take in. Author Lawrence Block proves his versatility in writing a series so different from his other works that you could more easily believe they were crafted by different authors. Don't underestimate the power of a craftily introduced tangent and you'll have fun with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Weakest of the "Burglar" books
Review: Burglar on the Prowl" starts off strong, but loses steam about 2/3 of the way through. Block recycles the "suspects all in the same room" ending from one of the early novels in this series and the the book finishes on a less than satisfying note.
The "Burglar" books have always relied on loose plotting that strains credibility and oddball characters. The smartass humor is there, along with the eccentric oddly named characters, but the result seems labored and seems to recycle elements from past books (names, plot devices); there are even footnoted entries that direct you to other books in the series that explain why he has a Mondrian, etc.
I'd hoped that the long drought since the last "Burglar" book was a good sign, particularly because Block seems to have revived the Scudder series after a series of clinkers. May be the next one will be better........
Rating: 
Summary: fun ride
Review: Don't even try to think through this complicated plot involving Latvians, Russians, a plastic surgeon, girls in bars, a mysterious fat man who overpays for a book, etc. Just enjoy the ride. Like all the Burglar series, this book is full of fast action and snappy banter between our hero, Bernie, and his friend Carolyn. In a city of 8 million, the coincidences of people bumping into each other begins to appear to be absurd, but grabs the reader's interest. And Bernie helps out our bumbling cop, Ray, by "pulling a rabbit out of his hat" again in a dramatic showdown, assembling a room full of suspects and interested parties for a complicated explanation that draws out the guilty to expose themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Why I prefer Matt Scudder
Review: Everything Block writes is worth reading, but this is more for the cozy reader. It's a little talky. The plot appears to meander. Only at the end do we see how complex it all is. There are bows to genre which are conventional to the point of spoofy irony--locked room problems, mystification, misdirection, McGuffins, and a resolution before the assembled dramatis personae. That resolution is complex to the point of tedium. It's all done with a great light touch and fully displays Block's skills and powers, but readers whose tastes run to the harder boiled should be warned that this may not be to their liking.
Rating:
Summary: Why I prefer Matt Scudder
Review: Everything Block writes is worth reading, but this is more for the cozy reader. It's a little talky. The plot appears to meander. Only at the end do we see how complex it all is. There are bows to genre which are conventional to the point of spoofy irony--locked room problems, mystification, misdirection, McGuffins, and a resolution before the assembled dramatis personae. That resolution is complex to the point of tedium. It's all done with a great light touch and fully displays Block's skills and powers, but readers whose tastes run to the harder boiled should be warned that this may not be to their liking.
Rating:
Summary: All of the author's usual devices don't add up this time
Review: I love Lawrence Block's novels, and I sure hope he isn't starting to give a diminished effort by just throwing together all the standard components of his The Burglar series, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr.In this installment, Bernie's pal Carolyn and Policeman Ray Kirschmann both reappear, and Bernie, as always, is something of a ladies man, but always the gentleman. The burglary that gets Bernie mixed up in a triple murder relies on coincidence to such a great degree, it loses believability. The romantic liaison is also a tough sell for this reader and the resolution of who did what to whom became so confusing it was hard to finish the book, and even when I had finished it, I still didn't understand the intricate relationships and miraculously timed coincidences. Please don't let my quibbling dissuade you from reading this book if you already like the Bernie Rhodenbarr series: If you're hooked on them, as I am, you have to read it. But if you've never read one of them, don't start with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Bernie Bags the Baddies!!
Review: If you haven't met Lawrence Block's busy bookselling burglar, Bernie Rhodenbarr, you have ten treats ahead of you that include The Burglar on the Prowl. Bernie's addicted to burgling. He loves the feeling of being in someone else's place when they are not there, and he adores the loot that he lifts. But he has a conscience. He remembers being burgled himself, and avoids taking items of sentimental value to the owners. If he sees a wrong, he'll do what it takes to right it . . . even if there's nothing in it for old Bernie. Although it's usually best to start at the beginning of a series (in this case with Burglars Can't Be Choosers), Mr. Block does a good job of providing background in this story so you could begin with this one without losing very much enjoyment. The Burglar on the Prowl starts off innocently enough. Old friend Marty Gilmartin (the owner of the baseball cards that were stolen in The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams) has a bone to pick with a fellow roué, plastic surgeon Crandall Rountree Mapes, who has seduced and alienated the affections of his girl friend. Never mind that both Gilmartin and Mapes are both married. Gilmartin wants vengeance. Gilmartin tells Bernie that Mapes keeps lots of cash in a wall safe at home and gives Bernie the address. Gilmartin is even willing to give up his usual finder's fee if Bernie will lift the loot. Bernie dutifully cases the joint, sees a way to pull off the caper, and heads home to watch Law and Order on television. Feeling twitchy, he decides to go out again. That impulse to go on the prowl sets off an incredible set of events that reverberate throughout the novel. After a lot of pondering, he decides he wants to burgle a brownstone . . . and wanders around until he finds one that calls out to him. Without casing the joint or knowing if anyone is at home, he breaks into a top floor apartment and finds some jewels and cash in the freezer. Then he hears two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs. He bolts for the window to the fire escape . . . and cannot open it. What next? Before the next few days are over, there are dead bodies all over New York and Bernie's been busted as a suspect in these cases. But he doesn't know anything about those bodies. Shaking off the inconvenience, there's still all of that loot at the Mapes place in Riverdale. Will Bernie glide away with it? These are just a few of the imponderables in The Burglar on the Prowl. Before he's done, Bernie finds a lot of baddies who need to be bashed . . . and Bernie does his best to be sure that happens. This book could have been subtitled "Meaningful Coincidences" and have understated the point. The plot creates astonishing connections among the characters that will leave you breathless by the end. Although it's all part of the fun of the book, if you are like me you'll find the plot overly complicated. Sometimes simple is better . . . and comic heist capers at some point lose their beauty with too many twists and turns. I graded the otherwise entertaining book down one star for the excesses in the plot. And the next time you get an urge to take a late night prowl, think of old Bernie in this book. Perhaps you'll decide to settle for a dish of ice cream at home instead.
Rating:
Summary: Fun Series
Review: If you want to know the plot, you can read the many versions in the earlier reviews. Like another reviewer before me, I'd rather read the book before I know the plot--especially in a mystery novel. But, I'll try to provide some value-added in a different regard. Lawrence Block has basically 3 series. Two are tongue-in-cheek (the Bernie Rhodenbarr the caring burglar and the Tanner "spy" series) and one is serious (Matt Scudder). I enjoy them all, but expect different things from them. In the Burglar series you usually get a lot of fun with Bernie getting into and out of trouble throughout, with humorous lines, delightful (if sometimes strange) characters, etc. In this one, the author points out the continuing evidence of lots of coincidences throughout the caper. He intentionally sacrifices credibility of events for humor and sheer fun. The Tanner books are similar in that regard. This particular offering is particularly coincidental and particularly fun--one of the most fun in the entire series, IMHO. Don't expect a Scudder-type book. They are wonderful (maybe more so) in their own right, but very different from the Bernie books. So, if you want a real whodoneit with all seriousness --where you try to figure out the guilty party etc. from the clues--read the Scudder books or Agatha Christie. If you want a really fun and humorous rollicking read, this is a great choice. Enjoy!!! p.s. It probably deserves at least another 1/2 star, but then I like Scudder better. Don't ask me why.
Rating:
Summary: Good old-fashioned style and humor
Review: In "Burglar on the Prowl," Bernie Rhodenbarr is presented with a bit of an ethical dilemma. While the slick burglar hides under the bed of a woman he's robbing, he hears her being raped. Should Bernie come to her rescue and risk jail time (and a possible pummeling from the rapist) for his thievery? Or should he just sit tight and hope he's not caught? To find the answer, you'll have to read the book.
"Burglar on the Prowl" is the story of the misadventures of bookstore owner and long time criminal Bernie Rhodenbarr. When one of his friends asks him to rob a mutual acquaintance in an act of revenge, Bernie can't refuse. After all, the loot is pretty handsome. But during a practice run, he encounters a delicate situation that he had not expected. To top it off, his face has been spotted on a security crime near another burglary. Only in this theft, the victims are murdered. When Bernie is robbed himself, he can't help but wonder if the murderers have something to do with it.
New York writer Lawrence Block, author of "Hope to Die" and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, uses some good old-fashioned style and humor to make this book a joy to read. With characters like Carolyn, his best friend who happens to be a lesbian with dating issues, and Ray, a policeman straight out of a sixties film, how can you go wrong? This book is an intriguing mystery that will make you think, laugh, and have an all around good time.
Rating: 
Summary: A master's hand at work
Review: Lawrence Block's tenth entry in his mystery series featuring beguiling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr has hit the fields of play with a wallop.
The first paragraph of BURGLAR ON THE PROWL ends with the frustrated explosion, "Words fail me," when Marty Gilmartin, a larcenous man himself, has come to ask of Bernie a favor only a burglar's skill can effect.
Gilmartin tries to describe his foe, a cad named Mapes who has stolen from him his paramour. Between Bernie and Gilmartin there ensues a lively discussion of apt epithets, deserving obscenities, supple nouns and adjectives, and paper, ink, cloth, and glue, the hard stuff of which supplies Bernie Rhodenbarr's day job as legitimate businessman, the proprietor of a used book store. Burgling is only a hobby.
Or, should we say, an obsession, in the most agonizing sense. For, Bernie cannot help himself. "On the prowl," he says: a phrase "deliciously attractive in an unwholesome way." In this book as never before, Bernie informs us of the joys, and the nonsense, of the drive to steal, the thrilling bad-boyness of it, the irresistibility of living on the teetery edge in the full knowledge of terrifying potential consequences. In a book with Bernie as the narrator, you know words will never fail.
This, while you sink into a world where crimes go down, thugs threaten, and bodies, alas, collect.
After the visit by Gilmartin, Bernie tells his sounding-board lesbian neighbor Carolyn Kaiser about Gilmartin's desire to get back at Mapes by lifting laundered money from a wall safe. Carolyn of course admonishes Bernie against risky behavior. Still, old friends help old friends. She accompanies him on a reconnaissance mission to Mapes' home. As it turns out, the moment is not right for a break-in. The two must wait for another day ... or night, as it were.
But now Bernie is restless. The bloom from Gilmartin's exciting charge has ignited the fuse of that calling from which Bernie is powerless to shrink. He slips out one evening and, after a few false starts to test his skills, enters an apartment belonging to a woman who comes home apparently drunk, escorted by a man with a deep voice. Trapped, Bernie slides, with difficulty, under the bed, a cliché of an action, a ridiculous fate for a practiced burglar. While silently berating himself, before long he realizes the woman has been drugged and is becoming a victim of date-rape. Wedged in as he is, he imagines several action scenarios.
What Bernie does or does not do after that is one of the nervy flourishes author Block seems more and more willing to dangle before us in recent works.
Series books, those with a run of familiar characters, sometimes risk a hazardous course: the danger of sameness. Not under Block's able swing. He is testing, testing .... And he is unapologetic about some of his conclusions, unpopular though they may prove to be.
This series, the burglar series, is the more lighthearted of the author's work. ON THE PROWL is faithful to that premise. Yet, as Bernie Rhodenbarr entertains us by pondering the puzzles and profundities of words, their origins and ambiguities, their richness and insufficiencies, he equally mulls over the meanings of life and the whys of inner drives, and sometimes the mirror shines too brightly.
Sitting down with a Block book is an adventure of wry wit and understated surprise. It is the pleasant anticipation of overheard conversation so smooth that in retrospect you might easily believe you actually heard it. You wait for the precise bon mot for which Bernie Rhodenbarr, lover of language, titan of trivia, guide to painless historical and literary allusions, is justifiably revered. In the now-and-then references to his past, Bernie, the inveterate book lover, even helps us out by footnoting which other book in the canon holds a particular incident in his "backstory," as novelists would call it.
But if Lawrence Block loves word play, he loves the intricate fittings of plot as surely much. Block can create a locked-room mystery like no other. He can mix Latvians and plastic surgeons in lacings that simply won't come apart. In Block's hands, coincidence seems the natural mandate of logic. We may be discomfited by the humanness of the main character, only to be confounded when Bernie performs the feat of not only returning lifted loot to a woman he feels sorry for but adding a few of his own bucks to boot. In this world of make-believe, we are made to believe.
Now that's writing, son. Get me a beer and another book off Bernie's shelf, soon.
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