What is David Rich reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: David Rich, author of Caravan of Thieves.

His entry begins:

On the coffee table in my den, Brighton Rock is opened to page 165. Pinkie, cut with razor blades, has returned to the wretched boarding house and reported Spicer’s death at the race track. “The Boy led the way into the bed sitting room and turned on the single globe. He thought of Colleoni’s room at the Cosmopolitan. But you had to begin somewhere. He said: “You’ve been eating on my bed again.”

Redemption can come “between the stirrup and the ground”, and a better life begins with wiping the crumbs off the bedcovers. Dread begins with Graham Greene. I reread this one once a year.

Most of my reading is rereading. It is tough to be admitted to the canon – the great Jim Thompson just got in a few years ago – but once admitted an author is on call around the clock. Books are...[read on]

About Caravan of Thieves, from the publisher:

From debut author David Rich, a spectacular crime thriller about a charming con artist, a complicated heist, and the son charged with constructing a fragile truth out of a lifetime of lies.

Rollie Waters is the smartest guy in any room. Working as an undercover marine, he knows all the angles, and he's never less than two steps ahead of trouble--a skill he learned from the con artist father who raised him, though he hasn't seen Dan in years. Like Dan, Rollie knows how to offer cheap gifts with one hand while stealing the family silver with the other. But, unlike Dan, Rollie is not a criminal.

Rollie’s childhood was a mesh of perfectly believable lies stretched so thin that he barely knows who he is. It’s only when he’s working undercover, inhabiting a false identity, that Rollie is comfortable in his own skin. The danger of deep undercover work makes use of his talents and keeps him out of trouble. Most of the time.

After he’s yanked out of his latest assignment and tossed in the brig, he’s only partly surprised when the officials in charge mention one name: Dan Waters. U.S. government money—a lot of money—has gone missing, and they think Rollie’s father took it. The only way to find Dan is to trace the frail tendrils of truth scattered among Rollie’s childhood memories. To do that, he’ll have to go deep into the undercover identity of a lifetime: his own.

Learn more about the book and author at David Rich's website.

Writers Read: David Rich.

--Marshal Zeringue