Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: January 01, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 1455462
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
James Carlos Blake writes literary novels of adventure -- of daring exploits and desperate hearts, of men and women whose characters shape their fate. Now, in A World of Thieves, he renders a story of crime and love in the closing years of the Roaring Twenties.
In 1928 New Orleans, eighteen-year-old Sonny LaSalle is a top prep student and champion amateur boxer -- and he venerates his fraternal twin uncles, Buck and Russell, armed robbers who love their profession. Sonny secretly believes that he, too, is a natural outlaw and persuades his uncles to take him on as a partner. Their early robberies go smoothly, and Sonny begins an affair with Brenda Marie, a rich and free-spirited art dealer in the French Quarter. But when a bank job goes bad, Sonny is sent to jail, where he unintentionally kills a policeman, the son of the most feared lawman in Louisiana who is widely known as 'John Bones.' After nine months in the infamous Angola penitentiary, Sonny makes a harrowing escape and reunites with Buck and Russell -- unaware that he is being hunted by the vengeful John Bones.
Sonny and his uncles head for the boomtowns of West Texas, where the money flows as freely as the oil. But after one of their robberies erupts in a gunfight, one uncle is badly wounded and the other is arrested and sentenced to a prison road gang. As Sonny sets out to free his imprisoned uncle, he finds himself caught between conflicting loyalties, and the story hurtles toward a thundering climax as the relentless John Bones catches up with Sonny at last.
A jazz-age story of vibrant joy and violent conflict, reckless passion, and an implacable nemesis, A World of Thieves is at heart the tale of a young man's reckoning with the truth of his own soul.
Amazon.com:
Penzler Pick, December 2001: James Carlos Blake has written several novels, but this is the very first that can be categorized wholeheartedly as a mystery. Set in the Southwest of 1928, it tells the story of three men who go on a journey of robbery and unintentional murder throughout Louisiana and Texas.
Sonny LaSalle is only a few years younger than his twin uncles, Russell and Buck, and he adores them and their way of life, which involves mostly robbing banks and rigging gambling scams. When he suggests that they take him on as a third partner, they indulge him and let him drive the getaway car on a bank robbery. Sonny is immediately caught and put in a holding cell where a fight breaks out. When Sonny hits a rookie cop who is trying to break up the fight, he inadvertently kills him and is sent to the infamous Angola prison in Louisiana for the long haul. But it's not in Sonny's nature to stay cooped up for long, and he soon escapes, doing what only a few have done before him: running along the levee to freedom and back to his uncles.
From then on, these charming felons career across the landscape stealing just enough money to keep them comfortable, meeting women, and helping damsels in distress. What these carefree villains do not know, but the reader does, is that the rookie cop's father, John Isley Bonham, is not going to simply let Sonny go free. Bonham is a longtime deputy sheriff near retirement. His life has been tragic, and the only joy he ever had was through his son. Bonham is said to have killed more men than any cop in the state. Although he's always claimed self- defense, rumour has it that some of the killings were, in fact, executions. Now he starts his slow, relentless campaign to hunt Sonny down and kill him. Russell, Buck, and Sonny do kill some innocent people, it's true, but compared to Bonham they are amateurs--and Bonham is closing in on them.
For fans of Daniel Woodrell, James Lee Burke, and Robbers, last year's exceptional very first novel by Christopher Cook, this book is a must. --Otto Penzler
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Rated by buyers 
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Whereas I enjoyed this book at the beach in a 3 day read --its pretty light stuff. Having read Handsome Harry I would recommend skipping this one and read a book based on fact instead. This as pure fiction lacks a certain creativity and leaves you thinking okay story okay action but simply okay. It uses many of the devices and story line that are present in Handsome Harry --but then Handsome Harry is a fictionalized account of an actual person and events.
Rated by buyers -
"A World of Thieves" follows a family of armed robbers across Louisiana and Texas in 1928.
The novel tells the tale of Sonny LaSalle, an 18-year-old amateur boxer from New Orleans who graduates with top grades and should know better than to join uncles Buck and Russell robbing banks. He doesn't, though, and quickly ends up in Angola Prison Farm, a notorious penitentiary bordered by the Mississippi River that's guarded almost entirely by inmates. Sonny accidentally killed a cop in a Baton Rouge jail brawl -- the son of "John Bones," the state's most feared lawman. Bones does not take the news well.
The 296-page novel details LaSalle's extrication from prison and a subsequent crime spree across the two states as Bones relentlessly hunts him down. Blake's criminals are unapolegetic about their livelihood, making the jump from card sharps to con men to armed robbers to bank robbers. Sonny's uncles believe he's foolish for not using his education to better himself.
"'We figured you'd end up doing your thieving with law books or account ledgers. Like that.'
"I wasn't sure if they were joking. They looked serious as preachers.
"'World's full of thieves,' Buck said, 'but the ones to make the most money is the legal kind.'"
That's about as introspective as the book gets. Blake emphasizes carnage over character, leaving me dubious at one point about an act the LaSalles commit without hesitation or remorse. I didn't think they had it in them. They're in crime for money and thrills, killing only in the act of escaping jobs gone bad (another reviewer charitably describes this as "unintentional murder"). The whole novel's bloody and oversexed, with one particularly cringe-inducing crime of passion that leaves Buck nicknaming a part of his anatomy "Mr. Stump."
I loved the period details in the book: grimy hellish Texas boomtowns, Pierce-Arrow roadsters and Gladstone bags, revolvers, guns and pistols of wide make and utility. As a Texas native, I've been to several of the places in the book back when they still had a little frontier left in them. Blake covers the territory well.
"A World of Thieves" is crisply told, perhaps too spare in detail when it comes to the heads of its protagonists. I didn't see the ending coming -- a single-paragraph chapter that hits at the speed of a bullet.
Rated by buyers -
It is cliche but A WORLD OF THIEVES is not James Carlos Blake's best work. The writing style seems flat or maybe controlled, not full of the vibrancy and literary energy of RED GRASS RIVER or IN ROGUE BLOOD. My best guess is that Mr. Blake decided to write a more subdued tale, a little quieter, more subtle than the others and it came out less passionate. A WORLD didn't win any book awards where both RED GRASS and IN ROGUE did, a fact which helps makes my point. But all this is only comparing Blake to Blake and Blake is the best. A WORLD OF THIEVES is still full of action and adventure and it brings to life the 1920's in Texas and Louisiana. You have roadsters and oil wells and speakeasys and boom towns and New Orleans and West Texas. The action includes fisticuffs (our hero is a champion boxer), prison escapes, gun battles and holdups. A particularly sinister villain adds menace to the tale. And there is a love story and a boy-coming-of-age story here as well. Plenty for the Blake fan. Not his best but still pretty good. I give it three and a half shotgun shells out of five.
Rated by buyers -
It is cliche but A WORLD OF THIEVES is not James Carlos Blake's best work. The writing style seems flat or maybe controlled, not full of the vibrancy and literary energy of RED GRASS RIVER or IN ROGUE BLOOD. My best guess is that Mr. Blake decided to write a more subdued tale, a little quieter, more subtle than the others and it came out less passionate. A WORLD didn't win any book awards where both RED GRASS and IN ROGUE did, a fact which helps makes my point. But all this is only comparing Blake to Blake and Blake is the best. A WORLD OF THIEVES is still full of action and adventure and it brings to life the 1920's in Texas and Louisiana. You have roadsters and oil wells and speakeasys and boom towns and New Orleans and West Texas. The action includes fisticuffs (our hero is a champion boxer), prison escapes, gun battles and holdups. A particularly sinister villain adds menace to the tale. And there is a love story and a boy-coming-of-age story here as well. Plenty for the Blake fan. Not his best but still pretty good. I give it three and a half shotgun shells out of five.
Rated by buyers -
I'm a big James Carlos Blake fan and it is painful to have to give A World of Thieves a mixed review. If this book had been written by another author and I had not read Red Grass River, I certainly would be singing the praises of this book. However, I know that Blake can do much better and really all he has done with this book is rewrite Red Grass River, moving the setting from the Everglades to Angola Prison in Louisianna and West Texas.
If you are new to Blake, do yourself a favor and read Red Grass River or In the Rogue Blood and wait until this one comes out in paperback. I think Blake does a tremendous job in recreating the underbelly of past American eras. His characters tend to be people living on the edge, pushed to violence by the forces of society. Rugged individualists. People who will kill savagely without missing a beat. But also people who have a tender heart towards their families and even complete strangers. One minute the protagonist is holding up a mom and pop grocery--the subsequent he is helping an old man change a tire along the side of a hot dusty Texas highway.
There are no easy answers or platitudes in Blake's books. Violence usually begets violence. And if you need happy, conventional endings, look elsewhere. But if you like to turn over a rock and see what's crawling underneath, then I can highly recommend Blake's work.
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