Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling The

Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone legit -- almost -- as the new owner of a used bookstore in New York''s Greenwich Village. Of course dusty old tomes don''t always turn a profit so to make ends meet Bernie''s forced on occasion to indulge in his previous occupation: burglary. Besides which he likes it.Now a collector is offering Bernie an opportunity to combine his twin passions by stealing a very rare and very bad book-length poem from a rich man''s library.The heist goes off without a hitch. The delivery of the ill-gotten volume however is a different story. Drugged by the client''s female go-between Bernie wakes up in her apartment to find the book gone the lady dead a smoking gun in his hand and the cops at the door. And suddenly he''s got to extricate himself from a rather sticky real-life murder mystery and find a killer -- before he''s booked for Murder One.