The Thieves of Heaven: 1

Wow! I have just finished this book after a one day sitting. Forget Dan Brown and all of the hapless imitators. This is an original, exceptionally literate and somewhat thought provoking novel. All of the elements, (thrills, fun, emotion and suspense) combine to make this one of my best reads in a very long time. So very glad that I stumbled upon this author whilst browsing through my recommendations on Amazon. I have already ordered the follow up "The Thieves Of Faith". Give it a bash. I am almost certain that you will become, as I did, hooked from the first few pages. What have you got to lose? You will only be denying yourself a real treat!

I have just finished reading this book and I feel emotionally drained and physically exhausted!! I feel the same as if I'd just come out of a cinema after watching a brilliant, exciting, horror/suspense film.Although part of the way into this book, I started thinking the storyline was becoming very ambitious, I soon became completely hooked and I found that I could not put the book down!I found the characters really good (and "bad"!!), and the book extremely enjoyable.In my opinion, it is superbly written, clever, thought-provoking, emotionally-charged, exciting, and frightening.If this is Richard Doetsch's debut novel, I'm really looking forward to reading more of his stuff!I would highly recommend this book - I can certainly see someone wanting to make a movie based on it!

many of the reviews say how well this is written- It is - it is very readable and in spite of my growing disbelief that anyone could try, as someone desccribed it, to outdo Dan Brown with such a plot, I read it to the end in the hope that there was a credible summation and ending- no such luck- in the end it really was just a well written load of of supernatural horror rubbish- make Finster a real human villain and you've got the makings of a good thriller-Doetsch could still have addressed the problems of faith and belief within this scenario and then it really would have been a thought provoking book-

I have read what actually seems to be the follow-up to The Thieves of Heaven; The Thieves of Faith. I seem not to have liked that one. So why read this one? Maybe I thought, he can't possibly do it twice. Or maybe I just wanted to return to the scene of a crime, I don't know.The plot? It does have one. He needs to steal some keys from The Vatican's absolutely most closely-guarded museum. But that's the easy bit, just the start of his troubles. As that happens about half way through the book, you know Doetsch is gonna have to go some from there on to top it. Or bottom it. And he does. Well, maybe. Well, who cares.I did read this and enjoy it up to a point. And that point was, where the main villain turned out to be quite obviously The Devil. Yes, him who used to be up there, but is now down here, with us. No getting away from it. It's The Devil. To be fair, the book did have its moments and I rattled through it. But only after a talk with myself, where I managed to persuade myself to suspend belief, just this one (second) time.To be more than fair, I liked Richard Doetsch's dedication at the front and he means well. But...well, it was all a bit too, much. Too perfect. Too worked out. All the characters were so full-on and written to be demanding of our sympathy, that I came to resent them. You just knew what the main man and his wife would love each other unconditionally. You knew his best mate would be a great bear of a man, who would love him unconditionally. You just knew…well, anyone reading this could guess what the characters' personality was and how they looked, just by Doetsch having written their names down in two columns; 'good' and 'bad'.And in the 'bad' column would have to be, from a European's point of view, whoever came up with the medical system over there in the USA: Where a guy has to go out and rob the bleeding' Vatican to get the money together to treat his dying wife! That's The Devil, right there. He should have just flown her over to Denmark, while he was down there in Italy and I'd have helped look after her (I work in a hospital) for nothing. 'To whom do I make the cheque out?' 'The what, now?'I wouldn't doubt for a moment if someone said this had sold by the truck-load. But either there are a whole load of people who don't give a monkey's about what they read, or a whole load of very disappointed people. I don't know if he's written a third one, but I'm gonna stop here. I think, if it hadn't been for the fact that I write a blog, I'd have forgotten about this by the time I'd put it back on the shelf here at Speesh Towers.

病気の妻の治療費を得るため、莫大な報酬と引き換えに引退した泥棒が、バチカンから古い鍵を盗み出す。しかし、その鍵は天国への鍵で、それを盗み出すことを依頼したドイツの大富豪の正体は・・・。というお話で、家族ぐるみで付き合いのある親友の刑事、バチカンの必殺仕事人？みたいな僧侶が絡んで、てんやわんやの大騒ぎを繰り広げます。肩の凝らない軽い読み物として、冬の夜長に読むのにちょうど良いでしょう。天国だの、バチカンだの出てきますが、小難しい神学談義は出てこないのでご安心を。その代わりにアクションがてんこ盛りです。一方、構成の荒さも目立ちます。例えば、クリフハンガーな場面で他の場面に話が飛んで、読者に先へ先へと読ませようとしているのは分かるのですが、一安心している場面を見せた後、また戻って、実はこのようなことがおきていたと説明されても緊張感が途切れます。また唐突に弱点が出てきたり、実はこの人は○○だったみたいな話が出てきます。総じて、割り切って読めばそれなりに楽しめますが、同程度の本なら他にいくらでもあるかなと。