Book review: Sherlock Holmes and the House of Silk.

Alright, so while the esteemed Mr Sherlock Holmes is generally (but not, it must be noted, exclusively) on the opposite side of the law from us here on this blog, he and his exploits do have a lot that we can talk about. It would be foolish to suggest that Conan Doyle's almost 60 stories that did so much to establish the Detective Procedural have had no influence on say, the genre of the Heist Flick, or fiction that focuses on the execution of crime rather than its detection.

And so we are going to take a brief break, and wander into the territory of the enemy, because I was given the new “official” Sherlock Holmes novel – The House of Silk, buy Anthony Horowitz – for Christmas, and I have just finished reading it, so feel compelled to furnish you with my review.

Steal from the Greats - The first thief.

So, where does all this obsession with thieves start? Lord knows where mine came from, I haven't the money nor time to get that much therapy, but culturally, why is the Thief such a figure in our collective psyche? Or is it even? Am I exaggerating the place of the Thief because of my fondness for the archetype? To answer that question let's go right back, to the beginning of thievery.

Who was the First Thief? From a purely historical point of view, I don't know if that question can even be answered with accuracy from any kind of perspective, but we are talking culture here. For this post at least, I am going to stick with Western culture, and delve back into the roots of what our current society would at least like to think of as its forebears: the ancient Greeks.

And if you ponder it only for a little moment, you will easily come to the same conclusion that I have: once of the earliest described heroes was a thief: Prometheus.

The son of two Titans, who stole fire from Zeus to deliver it to the mortals of the world. But if we look at him further, the story becomes even more interesting....

Lifted from Life: How much is enough?

Now here's a good question for you: when would you quit your life of crime? "Not soon enough" would appear to be the answer for these criminals:

Police arrest Safe Crackers: $6.5 Million dollar haul.

Police in Sydney arrested two men late last year, after searching properties owned and rented by them, and finding a $6.5 million dollar stash of cash, jewellery and goods.

The story was followed up by more details in this story a few days later:

Father and son team of safe-crackers appear in court.

Now, my question is this: if you had that kind of a haul, including $4 million in cash, and most of your victims were still unaware that they had been stolen from...

...why wouldn't you just walk away?


It appears that Phillip See and his father Christopher have been pulling off a series of safe heists, and leaving very little evidence for some time now. Police even put out a call to residents telling them to check their safes, because they wouldn't necessarily know they had been robbed!

A table of topics.

Of course, the more you think about it, the larger a topic theivery is. I would argue that Thief is in fact the world's oldest profession, and not the more traditionally quoted one. So that gives us quite a scope for investigation here.

Broadly speaking though, most of my posts will be dividable up into the following broad topics:

"Steal from the Greats." - talk around some of the Mythical Thieves that cultures have celebrated down the centuries.

"Steal from the Best." - Or possibly "a life of crime", I haven't quite decided which is the best title. This topic will cover some of the activities of Real Life criminals, and some of the truly amazing exploits that real people got up to.

"Heists." - I may well even entertain a sub-category of the above two: with stories about groups, or gangs of criminals, both fictional and real, and the complicated and wonderful crimes they can get up to.

"Rogue's Den." - Yes, I will of course be dipping into some "Gamey" stuff. this will not be exclusively Dungeons & Dragons focused, of course. There are some computer games that very definitely bear exploration.

"TDS reviews." - as a sub-category of the above, I am currently playing through the final installment in the classic Thief computer game series. No, I had never played it before (something of a purist for the originals), and I figured I'd better finally complete the old series, before EIDOS brought out their re-boot. I'll be reviewing the old game as I play it through, level by level.

"Flights of Felony." - every now and then, I might even be tempted to post up some of my own fiction, if it happens to contain a thief as a character, or deal with themes of that nature. As it often does.

"Lifted From Life." - This will be a small, experimental section, that will deal with events, or notes on real techniques, that someone I know may even have engaged in.

And then of course there will be some general musings on my behalf. Notes that I may make on cultural oddities, news items, and interesting titbits of history that I come across. I hope you feel like hanging around, and getting involved in the conversation.

One distinction should be made, though....

I do not love this guy:

Meet Dominick Harvey. He burgled a person's house in Riverside California, played around with the stolen laptop when he got home, then hocked the laptop at a pawn shop, or some such. Yes, you've guessed it: he left a photo of himself on the laptop (and I have no doubt his fingerprints all over it).

Dominick Harvey is not one of my heroes. Nor is Jason Glennon, the Irish drug addict who recently took a photo of himself on a mobile phone he had lifted from a car, before leaving it in the house he went on to burgle. He was discovered in the act, and legged it, dropping the bag and mobile phone in his haste to escape. Photo found on phone, police informed, Jason sent straight back to prison.

The unfortunate truth is that most actual criminals are like this. Banal, unimaginative, and grubby. Crime is not a terribly good way to make a living (more on that later).  Nor are the effects of of most crime terribly savoury. I have had friends whose house was burgled, and have had to watch them suffer through the trauma of no longer feeling safe in their own house.

Then there is violent crime, which I will state outright that I just do not like. Remember: I like the Thief best out of all the D&D classes, of which there are plenty of much more violent examples. I don't really go in for playing fighters, or barbarians, or rangers, or even the type of mage who stands there and slings around eldritch energy, causing havoc and mayhem with a flick of their wrists. Even the video games where you are a soldier, or perhaps a canny warrior don't really attract my attention. When I played Thief, I always played it at Expert level, which always forbade you to kill any humans. You literally failed the level if you killed someone. Instantly.

No, I need to make this clear: I do not sanction crime in general, or violence at all. Granted, theft is rarely a victimless crime, and I can't deny that someone gets hurt on some level by almost all crime. I do not say in this blog: let's celebrate murderers, burglars and thugs, rather let's enjoy the romantic fantasy of the Outlaw. The myth of the clever, intrepid, skilled professional, who at least has a sensibility of some form of justice when choosing his victims.

And it is abundantly clear from the two recent examples above that Crime in Real Life is rarely enjoyable in such a way.

In which we admit to an obsession.

I have a crush. I'll be the first to admit it.
And like all states of love, it is not entirely rational. My friends don't understand it. My wife certainly doesn't understand it. Which is not surprising, as this particular crush isn't on her.
It's on this guy here:

For those of you who don't recognise him, that is the illustration of the "Thief" character archetype, from the 1985 D&D Basic "Red Box" introduction set. Yes: ever since my aunt Kerry gave me that red box, and I opened up the Dungeon Master's guide booklet and saw him there, I have carried a torch for that little guy in my heart.

And I do mean the archetype, of course. The idea of thieves as romantic or even heroic figures is of course not a new one, even if it remains a little unconventional. Western folklore and mythology is littered with them, from ancient Greece through to the Australian outback. And our modern society had not fallen out of love with them: barely a year goes by when Hollywood does not release a heist flick of some flavour or another. Even the modern gaming market has produced a few notable examples, with one revival of a classic franchise in the works right now.

Why do we love them? Is it their ingenuity, or their swagger? Their pluck, or their luck? Do we admire their skill, while deploring their morals, yet all the time wishing we could break out of our mundane lives and join them in their rebellious pursuits? Whatever it is, I don't think I am alone in my obsession with all things theifly. And it is here that I intend to explore what it is that I so love about them, and what makes the Thief in our imaginations such a powerful and wonderful character.