The Lockpicker

March 13, 2017
Jake Ahn, the titular thief of this blunt and often brutal crime novel from Chang (Fade to Clear), shoots his former partner, Bobby Null, after the latter betrays him in Seattle, and runs off to San Francisco (with a backpack containing $8,755 in cash) to hide with his brother, Eugene. Jake starts selling jewels, setting up his next score, and falling in love with Eugene’s wife, Rachel. Meanwhile, the mentally unstable Bobby luckily survives the bullet in his gut and embarks on a quest for revenge. Chang spends a little too much time on the flashbacks to Bobby and Jake’s brief partnership, but the sexual tension as Jake and Rachel fall for each other in the present day more than compensates. Also engrossing are both Bobby’s amateurish, often violent search for Jake and the detail Chang provides about robberies, from casing the stores to fencing the loot. Fans of hard-boiled and caper novels will be satisfied.

March 1, 2017
Jake Ahn, the Korean American star of this immensely entertaining novel, is a thief, burglar, and safecrackerin short, the sort of charismatic scoundrel one would meet in a Hitchcock movie. But Jake hates talk like that. Reality is brutal, he says, and demonstrates. We join him in flight to Los Angeles from a partner's betrayal in Seattle. The partner wound up being gut-shotby Jakeand left for dead in a dumpster. Jake hopes to hide out with his brother, with whom he's had a rocky relationship dating back to childhood. Here's where Chang carefully darkens his story without compromising the relentless plotting. Jake's brother is a disaster in his job and his marriage, and his desirable wife hooks up, in all senses, with thieving Jake. It's all tax free, she marvels as they plot a heist. But the body in the dumpster has crawled out seeking revenge, and Jake's sad brother is catching on. The finale is 50 pages of beautifully choreographed violence that manages to be witty and thoughtful through all the mayhem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)