Bernie is a good neighbor. Polite. Clean. Spends weekends playing poker with friends, none of whom know what he does for a living: He is a burglar. A very good one, who can worm his way into a rich apartment and is out with all the valuables before you can blink.
He makes few mistakes, and looks at the ones he has made as a teachable moment. When he is approached by a person with specific instructions to rob a specific apartment, his alarm bells go off. But he takes the assignment, and while he is busy trying to break into the writing desk, a pair of police officers show up.
While he is negotiating how much they would accept to let him walk away, one of the cops discovers a dead body in the next room. Now suddenly, he is not a robbery suspect, but a murder suspect. Bernie bolts and is the subject of a great manhunt. And the only way he can come clean is to find the actual killer.
A very unusual murder mystery, where the detective is the suspect, and has to solve the mystery while on the run from authorities. The writing is in first person, full of clever quips and fast dialogues, with several cultural references to life in ‘70s New York. The mystery was also quite well woven; I did not suspect the eventual murderer at all. On the whole, a great and enjoyable read.