This is the sort of book that you will have to read twice.

A slow to start nar­ra­tive that evolves into a nail-bit­ing caper, The Thieves of Man­hat­tan is tongue-in-cheek com­men­tary on the state of the pub­lish­ing indus­try and its can­on­iza­tion of fib­bing memoirists. 

Author Adam Langer’s pro­tag­o­nist, an aver­age twen­ty-some­thing lit­er­ary wannabe work­ing as a barista on the Upper West Side, unwit­ting­ly becomes the hero of his own pub­lish­ing indus­try escapade. 

Full of sur­pris­ing twists, this sto­ry picks up when Ian Minot falls prey to the machi­na­tions of a strange cus­tomer, dubbed Con­fi­dent Man, who con­vinces him to pass off the man’s swash­buck­ling nov­el as Ian’s own memoir. 

The result is a ver­i­ta­ble writer’s book, filled with inside jokes and lit­er­ary allu­sion and car­i­ca­tures of edi­tors who offer six-fig­ure advances after read­ing only the first and last pages of man­u­scripts. Mean­while, in Ian’s world, fic­tion mas­quer­ades as fact, and what’s false quick­ly become true. 

We get the sense that Langer had fun writ­ing this work of pure fic­tion, answer­ing his own stream of ​“what if’s.”

Read Adam Langer’s Posts for the Vis­it­ing Scribe

Adam Langer Writes a Screen­play

Adam Langer Writes a Book in Two Months

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