The house next to my mother's was robbed. Then the spare house (not as glamorous as it seems; he inherited it from a recently deceased family member) of one of my friends was robbed. Then I interrupted a robbery at the house of my boss. This isn't over a large period of time; this took place in the same week. This all piqued my interest and sent me to Reddit - home of anecdotal evidence on the internet - to learn how to make a home a thief deterrent.
It was in sifting through a smash-and-grab AMA (ask me anything), that I learned about this book and immediately headed over to PaperBackSwap to pick up a copy to read. I found a copy and ordered it and in less than a week, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the page.
Nine Lives: Confessions Of A Master Jewel Thief which is simply a retitled version of Confessions Of A Master Jewel Thief is listed as having been written by William (Bill) Mason, but was actually ghost written by Lee Gruenfeld. It is a well written work.
The book can be divided into two halves: the first is boasting about heists - though with far fewer details than I had hoped - and the second is the legal implications and consequences of having committed the heists. I was less enthusiastic about reading the second half as it did less to expose the inner thoughts of someone thinking of breaking in to an apartment/condo/house to get the goodies inside. Example of said inner thoughts: "Nothing works more in a thief's favor than people feeling secure. That's why places that are heavily alarmed and guarded can sometimes be the easiest targets. The single most important factor in security--more than locks, alarms, sensors or armed guards--is attitude. A building protected by nothing more than a cheap combination lock but inhabited by people who are alert and risk-aware is much safer than one with the world's most sophisticated alarm system whose tenants assume they're living in an impregnable fortress."
Bill Mason has an ego the size of something really, really big. But then again, you wouldn't be able to be a thief who did the things that you did without such an ego. He admits, rather unashamedly, to being selfish and self-centered in that way that people do when they don't mean to change, and also acknowledges the harm he brought to others in that way that people do when they don't mean to change and where change is the only way to make amends. I managed to enjoy the story despite this, but others might find this to be a stumbling block around which they cannot proceed.
I also found the time-line to be somewhat secondary to the overwhelming themes. While the story proceeds in a mostly linear fashion, there are several points where I had to flip pages to figure out where things appear. In one, a later story is referenced too early and in another an earlier story is stuck in too late. While this wasn't a deal breaker, it did cost my review a single star.
Other than that, I, not a fan at all of true crime, could not tear my eyes from this book and inhaled it rather quickly. You could say that I was riveted, but I think it is more that I was intrigued and that there were no natural stopping points, so I just kept going in order to satiate my curiosity.
It was in sifting through a smash-and-grab AMA (ask me anything), that I learned about this book and immediately headed over to PaperBackSwap to pick up a copy to read. I found a copy and ordered it and in less than a week, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the page.
Nine Lives: Confessions Of A Master Jewel Thief which is simply a retitled version of Confessions Of A Master Jewel Thief is listed as having been written by William (Bill) Mason, but was actually ghost written by Lee Gruenfeld. It is a well written work.
The book can be divided into two halves: the first is boasting about heists - though with far fewer details than I had hoped - and the second is the legal implications and consequences of having committed the heists. I was less enthusiastic about reading the second half as it did less to expose the inner thoughts of someone thinking of breaking in to an apartment/condo/house to get the goodies inside. Example of said inner thoughts: "Nothing works more in a thief's favor than people feeling secure. That's why places that are heavily alarmed and guarded can sometimes be the easiest targets. The single most important factor in security--more than locks, alarms, sensors or armed guards--is attitude. A building protected by nothing more than a cheap combination lock but inhabited by people who are alert and risk-aware is much safer than one with the world's most sophisticated alarm system whose tenants assume they're living in an impregnable fortress."
Bill Mason has an ego the size of something really, really big. But then again, you wouldn't be able to be a thief who did the things that you did without such an ego. He admits, rather unashamedly, to being selfish and self-centered in that way that people do when they don't mean to change, and also acknowledges the harm he brought to others in that way that people do when they don't mean to change and where change is the only way to make amends. I managed to enjoy the story despite this, but others might find this to be a stumbling block around which they cannot proceed.
I also found the time-line to be somewhat secondary to the overwhelming themes. While the story proceeds in a mostly linear fashion, there are several points where I had to flip pages to figure out where things appear. In one, a later story is referenced too early and in another an earlier story is stuck in too late. While this wasn't a deal breaker, it did cost my review a single star.
Other than that, I, not a fan at all of true crime, could not tear my eyes from this book and inhaled it rather quickly. You could say that I was riveted, but I think it is more that I was intrigued and that there were no natural stopping points, so I just kept going in order to satiate my curiosity.
