The wallpapering was finished in the dining room, officially, yesterday with the sconces re-hung and the rug moved back in from the family room. As I began to reload the crystal cabinet and the silver chest, I had a strange Virgo-like need to write up a count of how many of each piece I have. Am I doing this to round out service sets? To know what I should be on the look out for on eBay? Or because I am spooked after reading Something Missing by Matthew Hicks?
This is the last of four books sent by Emily in my birthday box and like the other three, a good read. This is the story of an antisocial man, Martin Railsback who supplements his pitiful job at Starbucks with stealing from several residences on an on-going basis, in one case, for over nine years. Martin is compulsive in his research and requirements for becoming one of his “clients:” certain demographics and surroundings are paramount. In addition, he has strict standards for his own entry, surveillance and targeted items. He comes with a “shopping list” of groceries written in French, watching expiration dates and only taking a small number of items the home owners have in bulk. But he needs to make money besides being well fed so he photographs jewelry, china, silver and crystal to notice their lack of use, therefore, their likelihood of not being immediately missed.
Dicks structure is that of the all-knowing narrator, one who not only observes Martin in the minutest detail but describes what is going on in his thoughts. The logic and planning of his burglaries belie the image of the dumb criminal. He is no Cary Grant cat burglar though, bereft with phobias, misreading social situations and needing to rehearse all conversations that he cannot avoid in the first instance. Eventually, the story line develops this second layer – that what is missing is not the cache of luxury items but a piece of Martin’s personality.
Dicks brings this deficits much more into play in the second half of the book as Martin’s strategies to know his clients without ever feeling for them begins to fall apart: he is still in one house when the owners show up unexpectedly early; he encounters pets and children, two of his disqualifications for becoming a client; and most importantly, he begins to influence the behaviors of his clients by obliquely contacting them. He overhears a wife bemoaning never getting flowers and sends an anonymous note to the husband; he listens to a phone message that would expose a surprise birthday party and intervenes to ensure the wife in this case has time to delete the message and hide the gift.
As these near misses occur with more frequency, the reader wonders if it is inevitable that Martin is caught and undone. The reader fights with the balance of seeing his thefts as justified, harmless, and maybe done for a higher purpose, especially when Martin saves a client from attack. To become “Super Yegg” Martin finds himself reconnecting with a father he hasn’t seen in twenty years and dating.
Several blog reviews lately have commented on the author introducing into his work the self-disclosing aspects of the need to write, the search for an appropriate topic and voice, and the tension between the writer’s life experiences and fictionalized facts. It is the use of the all-knowing narrator that makes this book so “itchy.” In the about the author section at the back of the book, Dicks’ youthful peccadilloes are listed, his late-blooming straight career plus a disclaimer “that he is not, himself, a thief.” Why does that word “himself” bother me so much? Stopping the review now – forgot to write down how many cocktail forks I have.
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