Bernie occasionally makes mistakes. Like accepting a paid assignment from a total stranger to retrieve a particular item from a rich man's apartment. Like still being there when the cops arrive. Like having a freshly slain corpse lying in the next room, and no proof that Bernie isn't the killer.

It's hard to ignore someone with his hands in your mouth. Bernie Rhodenbarr's all ears when Dr. Sheldrake, his dentist, starts complaining about his detestable, soon-to-be-ex wife, and happens to mention the valuable diamonds she keeps lying around the apartment.

A collector is offering Bernie an opportunity to combine his twin passions by stealing a very rare and very bad book-length poem from a rich man's library.

Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn't generally get philosophical about his criminal career. He's good at it, it's addictively exciting—and it pays a whole lot better than pushing old tomes. He steals therefore he is, period.

After appraising the worth of a rich man's library -- conveniently leaving his fingerprints everywhere in the process -- Bernie finds he's the cops' prime suspect when his client is murdered.

An unscrupulous landlord's threat to increase Bernie's rent by 1,000% is driving the bookseller and reformed burglar back to a life of crime -- though, in all fairness, it's a very short trip.

When he's hired to pilfer a portfolio of valuable documents from a Park Avenue apartment, Bernie can hardly refuse.

Bookseller and New-Yorker-to-the-bone, Bernie Rhodenbarr rarely ventures out of Manhattan, but he's excited about the romantic getaway he has planned for himself and current lady love Lettice.

Gulliver Fairborn's novel changed Bernie Rhodenbarr's life. And now Alice Cottrell, Fairborn's one-time paramour, wants him to break into a room in New York's Paddington Hotel and purloin some of the writer's very personal letters before an unscrupulous agent can sell them.

A philosophical yet practical gentleman, Bernie Rhodenbarr possesses many admirable qualities: charm, intelligence, sparkling wit, and unwavering loyalty. Of course, he also has this special talent and a taste for life's finer things.

Ever since The Burglar on the Prowl climbed the bestseller lists, fans have been clamoring for a new book featuring the lighthearted and lightfingered Bernie Rhodenbarr.