Thick as Thieves - Softcover

Christopher Reich is the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Betrayal, Rules of Vengeance and The Patriots Club, which won the International Thriller Writers Award for best novel in 2006. He lives in California with his family.

A storm is rising off the coast of southern Florida. Dark clouds gather on the horizon. The air is hot and thick and uncomfortably still as a band of professional thieves embark on the first steps of the heist of the century.

And so begins Thick as Thieves, the wildly entertaining new novel by Peter Spiegelman. The story unfolds slowly, seductively, but with a clear eye and firm resolve. We feel the warm breezes stirring. We respond and turn the pages, intrigued by the promise of illicit action, or maybe recognizing deep within ourselves, a taste for it. This is class...make no mistake...smart, sleek, intoxicating. And then—wham!—like a gust slamming the back door, we’re all the way in. There’s no going back, not that you’d want to, even for a second. We’re part of the gang now, one of the hardened criminals intent on pulling off the most challenging “job” of their lives and raking in a score that will keep them in champagne and caviar for the rest of their lives.

The story centers around a former CIA agent named Carr--tall, lean, haunted--a genius for planning finally in charge of his own crew. There’s Bobby and Dennis and Latin Mike, and all of them are dangerous. And then there’s Val--a sultry, protean beauty, who may or may not be falling for Carr as hard as he has fallen for her. And none can be trusted. Not if Carr wants to get to the other side of this thing alive.

The action bolts from Houston to Miami to the Cayman Islands as Carr and his accomplices get ever closer to their mark, a fallen hedge fund manager named Curtis Prager, who has re-invented himself as a banker to the world’s most dangerous criminals, and who alone holds access to their ill-gotten billions. Spiegelman’s evocative prose makes us scent a hint of jasmine, taste the salt in the air, and peel the shirt off our back.

But make no mistake, Thick as Thieves is a page-turner, a thrill machine crafted as beautifully as a fine Swiss timepiece. And the pages fly by, as with a knot in our gut, we race to discover who’s conning who, if Carr really is the mastermind he’s thought to be, and if, in the end, there really is such a thing as “honor among thieves.”

Peter Spiegelman is the author of Black Maps, which won the 2004 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel, Death’s Little Helpers, and Red Cat. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Mr. Spiegelman spent nearly twenty years in the financial services and software industries, and worked with leading banks and brokerages around the world. He lives in Connecticut.