The Thieves of Manhattan

by Adam Langer
Spiegel & Grau, 259 pp., $15 (paper)

The publisher, or perhaps the author himself, hit the nail on the head when deciding to release The Thieves of Manhattan as an original trade paperback. Everything from the straightforward writing style to the bite-sized chapters makes Adam Langer’s latest novel as readable as they come. Take it to the beach, but don’t turn your brain off just yet.

What starts as a commentary on the world of publishing evolves (devolves?) into a thriller complete with gunplay, a femme fatale, a treasure map, and double crosses. At the center of the hullaballoo is not a Maltese falcon but a rare manuscript that either burned years ago or was heisted and made to look like it was destroyed.

This is all unbeknownst to Ian Minot, who lives on the outskirts of literary success as he toils his talents away in a coffee shop. That is, until he is sucked into a literary confidence game where he meets a cast of characters that resembles the real world’s publishing pariahs, including memoirist-in-the-hood Blade Markham, whose persona echoes that of JT Leroy (aka Laura Albert, whose words of praise for Langer sit hintingly on the book’s back cover). Oprah whipping boy James Frey is probably the best corollary to the protagonist. As Ian slides down the slippery slope of turning fiction into memory and memory into fact, Langer throws in a few humorous barbs at everything from Charles Frazier’s book advances to Michael Chabon’s haircut and Jonathan Franzen’s glasses.

For Langer, the art of the memoir lies somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. A memoir is only as good as the author’s memory, and in the world of Thieves (and the real world), where publishers are as desperate to find the next big thing as struggling authors are to be successful, the “truth” gets fuzzier by the moment.

Langer’s sharp and readable prose sometimes bogs down in a labyrinth of Paul Auster-esque meta-noir, but those moments are few. Most of the time the plot trucks along with enough plot twists and literary in-jokes to keep the brain engaged and the eye bouncing along contentedly. It’s a beach read you don’t need to be ashamed of.

This article appears in August 6 • 2010.

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James graduated from Columbia University in 2000 and moved to Austin a year later. Ever since, he has followed the arts and video game scene in ATX, editing and writing stories for the Chronicle along the way. Over his more than 20 years with the paper he has climbed the "corporate" ladder from lowly intern to managing editor.