WYATT

Two super-thieves meet in Melbourne and discover the world isn’t big enough for both of them.

Wyatt Wareen and Alain Le Page are cut from the same larcenous cloth. They think alike, they sound alike at the rare times when they talk and they operate from the same existential premise: Nothing matters but the job. They even look alike. Wyatt is “wiry, stripped down, bones close to the surface…with the kind of eyes that take and give nothing." It’s a description that fits Le Page just as snugly. Among his peers, thieves of the highest echelon, Le Page gets extra marks for his knife work. But transcending all other similarities is the way they plan. Both are meticulous and detail-oriented in the extreme. So when things go as terribly wrong as they do in Melbourne, it’s probably not fair to fault either one. Blame it on bad luck, or an inattentive St. Dismas. Blame it on a jumped-up, suddenly ambitious fence named Eddie Oberin, the link between two entirely separate heists. Or blame it on Eddie’s girlfriend Khandi Cane, who’s equally capable of loopy behavior and homicidal rage. At any rate, what should have been a workaday job with sensible payoffs for each becomes a hodgepodge of betrayal and murder, leading to a confrontation between super-thieves neither one wants.

Once again Disher (Blood Moon, 2009, etc.) takes us back to the golden age of thrillers, a time when they were fast, taut and dependably suspenseful.