Heist stories always seem so straightforward at the beginning. All that stands between our protagonists and possession of whatever it is they covet or require is a team with the right skills, a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a fox, and a bit of concerted effort. What could possibly go wrong? And yet, something always does.
It doesn’t matter if the heist takes place in a mundane world or a science fiction world or a fantasy world. There are always complications…because otherwise, where’s the fun?
Here are five heist books you may have missed.1
An Illusion of Thieves by Cate Glass
Sold to a brothel by her mother, Romy reinvented herself as Cantagna’s premier courtesan, mistress to the city-state’s Shadow Lord. When Romy begs the Shadow Lord to intervene on her father’s behalf, the affronted lord sends her back to the city’s slums. She reinvents herself again, this time as a scribe, but her efforts to reform her brother prove less successful. The Shadow Lord’s spiteful wife Gilliette approaches Romy to beg a favour.… Well, it’s more of a demand. Romy is to help Gilliette conceal an ill-considered theft. If Romy fails? Gilliette loathes her husband’s mistress and will simply frame the low-born prostitute.
As it happens, Romy also has a magical talent. So does her brother. So do two of their associates. There are just two small problems:
- Each person has one particular ability and the group is stuck with whatever abilities the four allies happen to have, not the talents they might want for their heist.
- Possession of magical talent is a crime punishable by death.
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An Illusion of Thieves
The Big Boost (A.I. War, Book 1) by Daniel Keys Moran
2080: The Unification has a simple dream. It wants to conquer every independent community in the Solar System, and then give the survivors the same firm governance the Earth has enjoyed ever since the UN crushed the last terrestrial resistance at the beginning of the century. Life is so straightforward when a legion of killer cyborgs enforces the law. (Damage to civil liberties or innocent bystanders can be expected, but…safety trumps all!)
The linchpin of the UN’s plan is the Unity, a seven-kilometer-long warship which the UN has been building since the early 2070s. Losing the Unity would be a tremendous setback for the UN. Famed criminal Trent the Uncatchable is asked to…ah…deal with the ship. Trent’s employers are comfortable with collateral damage. They expect Unity to vanish in a vast explosion. Trent is a thief who lost his entire family to the idea that “the ends justify the means.” He has a much more ambitious plan for the Unity….
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The Big Boost
The Crown Jewels by Walter Jon Williams
Drake Majistral owes his career as a famous gentleman thief to a long-dead kleptomaniac emperor. Rather than admit that their revered emperor might have has a flawed character, the alien Khosali invented the role of the Allowed Burglar. Mere theft is still illegal, but escapades performed with style and panache? That’s another matter.
Drake is very good at flamboyant theft, which permits him to continue enjoying a life of pampered luxury despite recent setbacks to the wealth and standing of his aristocratic family. Complications ensue when Drake steals the wrong object. Those who covet it might not be able to capture the charming scoundrel, but they can certainly try to kill him.
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The Crown Jewels
Steal the Sky by Megan E. O’Keefe
Detan Honding is a confidence man. A supremely skilled confidence man. He takes on identity after identity, scamming the gullible and then moving on.
This time Detan and his buddy Tibs have cut it too fine; they’ve stayed too long on Aransa and a quick departure is necessary. Transportation? Commodore Thratia’s elegant airship seems just the thing.
But there’s a problem. A face-shifting killer is assassinating Aransa’s ruling elite, one by one. The rulers are jumpy, paranoid. Security has been tightened. Detan needs to leave before his identity is revealed, but it’s going to be tricky. If he fails, death awaits.
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Steal the Sky
Carve the Sky by Alexander Jablokov
Fine art is a wonderful thing and the priceless, enigmatic figurine at the center of this tale is of wonderful beauty. Of more interest to Lord Monboddo, however, is the material from which the artifact has been carved: pure transuranic ngomite, a relic of the mysterious, long-vanished alien Acherusians. A figurine implies a larger sample from which it was carved—find the original and reap untold wealth. It sounds so simple, save for two trifling details: Monboddo is not the only person hunting for the ngomite, and he has entirely misunderstood the treasure’s true significance.
No doubt the genre abounds with many other fine examples I could have mentioned but didn’t2. Feel free to mention them in the comments.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He was a finalist for the 2019 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, is one of four candidates for the 2020 Down Under Fan Fund, and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]I’m not going to talk about works that I think everyone is generally aware of, such as Scott Lynch’s “The Lies of Locke Lamora.”
[2]I haven’t mentioned my favourite heist series yet, which is non-genre but whose author came out of SF. More on that later.
I clicked the amazon buttons and each said they weren’t available for purchase at this time. Is there a trick?
I’ll 2nd _The Big Boost_, but it’ll make a lot more sense if you read _The Long Run_ (and possibly also _The Last Dancer_) first. _Emerald Eyes_ is optional, but also a good read.
No mention of _The Lies of Locke Lamora_?
For one built almost entirely on crime, there’s the Golden Globe by John Varley. With Sparky Valentine, you learn how actors got such a negative reputation. He cons, stows away, trespasses, steals and assaults. And gets into trouble with the Charonese Mafia.
Then there’s the Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. Jean Lefleur is a transhuman to post-human con man and thief that’s got a doozy of a caper on Mars and the rest of the trilogy has some nice bits as well.
And let’s not forget the Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Locke, Jean and the rest of the Gentleman Bastards are a treat
Alan Dean Foster’s “Flinx” books start out with him as a thief, if not a “gentleman” as such.
2: Footnote 1:
OK, since we are talking about “The Lies of Locke Lamora”…
Is it really a “caper novel”? It’s reputation implied that, and i read it expecting something relatively light-hearted, but instead got a remarkably large amount of murder, torture, and misery. Still quite a good book, but more Godfather than Ocean’s 11. But perhaps I took it the wrong way?
Carve the Sky is a good read with a great McGuffin
Artemis by Andy Weir is amazing – moon heist!
The Quantum Magician by Derek Kunsken is absolutely a heist novel with plenty of tropes but done in a very fun way and a great cast of characters (including an AI that thinks it’s a reincarnated saint, a cheerful ex-marine with a hobby in explosives, a foul-mouthed pilot who lives in a tank because his people were designed to operate on an extreme planetary environment, and an outcast from one offshoot of humanity that was engineered to literally worship another and more.
I have a soft spot for heist stories in SFF settings. The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes is one of my favorites.
Is it “later” yet? Curious about that favorite heist series of yours. First thought was Westlake’s Dortmunder books, but while he did write an SF novel or two I don’t think I’d say he “came out of” SF.
@11: I think he’s talking about Westlake – he wrote a lot of SF http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1487 and unless I’m mistaken, wrote SF exclusively for several years before branching out.
I don’t THINK Westlake wrote SF exclusively early in his career. Like many writers of that period, he wrote whatever he could sell — in his case, at least crime fiction and porn right from the start, as well as SF.
He famously broke with SF in the early ’60s via an essay in the great fanzine Xero, in which he blamed most of SF’s problems on John Campbell. He kind of had a point, but the main problem in his case, I think, was that his SF was mediocre, and his crime fiction was good. (And the best SF story I’ve read by him was a crime story set in the future.) So, really, it was in his best interest to focus on crime fiction.
(I don’t know for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if he also wrote sports stories and Westerns early on.)
I’m glad to see mentions of stuff I really like such as the Jablokov and Williams books. The others certainly look fun too!
I was trying to think of a Niven story that might work as a heist, and all I can come up with off the top of my head is “The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club” as a sort of inverse-heist story…
Anyone got a better match? “The Defenseless Dead” sorta involves a heist, but it’s not a story ABOUT the heist, I think.
I’m astonished that they was no mention anywhere of Scott Lynch’s “The Lies of Locke Lamora.”
…
I kid! I kid! But I’ve never heard of the title or author. Is it a famous work?
Terry Pratchett Going Postal and Making Money. Not precisely heist movies, but the hero is a con-man forced to go straight (which wouldn’t work for any lesser reason than being up against the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork). He manages to twist the terms of his gainful employment in a number of ways to make it more entertaining, and eventually discovers the venture capitalists he’s up against are far dodgier than he ever was.
@10.Jen
You beat me to it! I love The Palace Job (and the sequels), always surprised that they’re not more popular.
Also: add me to the list of people who love Westlake’s Dortmunder books;)
2: I haven’t mentioned my favourite heist series yet, which is non-genre but whose author came out of SF. More on that later.
Parker or Dortmunder?
Strangely, I immediately thought of Mistborn: The Final Empire by Sanderson. I admit that the heist is only the first half of this book. But it was really cleverly done in my mind, especially for a fantasy book.
My favorite heist book is Mistborn – essentially, Ocean’s 11 in a fantasy context.
Also, I like the reverse situation in Brust’s Jhereg – thief gets away with the perfect heist and hides in plain sight in a safe place. Vlad and his team has to pull the clever Ocean’s 11 plan to get the thief out of the safe place, before a crisis develops.
Edit – ninja’d by @19
I love a good fantasy heist. The Magicians Land has a good one; Harry Dresden recently pulled a great one; Glen Cook’s Garrett does one just about every other book it seems.
On the SF side; you start with The Stainless Steel Rat of course and go on from there. The “Time Heist” episode of Doctor Who will be a classic one day.
An Illusion of Thieves doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. The story is more entertaining than you’d expect it to be. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel, A Conjuring of Assassins, when I get the time.
Also, as a fan of Megan O’Keefe’s Protectorate series, I’ll be reading Steal the Sky soon, too.
As they say, you go to a heist with the talents you have, not the talents you might
want to have at a later time.
On of my favorite SF heist novels is _The Five Gold Bands_ by Jack Vance.
Stereotypically Irish protagonist Paddy Blackthorn proves very resourceful
when the job literally blows up in his face, and there is an interesting variety
of planetary cultures shown. Some consider it minor Vance, but you can’t loose
if you find the Ace Double edition paired with _The Dragon Masters_.
Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist
Mistborn was the first book I thought of…but that may be one that many people know about.
Mistborn is not a heist book. Brandon originally conceived it as one, but it morphed into something much bigger than a simple heist. The goal became to overthrow the Empire and not just steal its treasury.
None for five here.
And no Stainless Steel Rat books ?
https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Steel-Rat-Harry-Harrison/dp/1857984986/
And I am half remembering another thief book, maybe Psion.
The Crown Tower is chronologically the first of Michael J Sullivan’s Riyria books. A curious twist on the heist story, and the start of a beautiful(?) friendship between two rather damaged but skilled people. I’ve enjoyed all of the Riyria stories; that makes.. wow eight books now, going on nine.
Time to mention my favourite heist story. Not a book, rather a movie. And one a case could be made for to be genre if you squint just right. After all, a centrally managed automatic traffic control system would count as a fiction of science in the late 60s, right?
And central to the concept of a heist tale is dealing with the quirks of your chosen experts… like, for example, an overly perverted computer expert.
I am, of course, talking about the original “The Italian Job”.
The second half of Bujold’s Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is a heist. Things go south. Literally.
I’m struggling to locate a Stainless Steel Rat “heist” per se, an act of theft or robbery. Well, the first novel has the Matter of the Misplaced Battleship, but that wasn’t him. We first (in publication order) meet him running a “business” next door to a legitimate business run by robots, I think, that don’t notice that their work output is now being conveyor-belted out of their premises into his. Is that a heist… And he’s sometimes found fleeing pursuit after a sketchy bank robbery… so to speak.
@14: Niven’s novel Destiny’s Road features a heist of a sort.
@@@@@28 Strong 2nd on 1969’s The Italian Job as a classic heist story. I got to see it again about a year ago. I had forgotten that Noel Coward is in it (and it was only 40 years since the first time I saw it). Younger viewers should to be prepared for ’60’s attitudes toward women, but it’s still enormous fun.
I am also a fan of Derek Kunsken’s QUANTUM MAGICIAN
Two that I have very much enjoyed recently are Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (and the sequel, but that’s more of a grift than a heist) and California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout. Oh, and The Builders by Daniel Polansky, which is really a revenge story, but it checks a lot of heist boxes. Someone upthread mentioned Skin Game by Jim Butcher, which I’d wholeheartedly recommend, but it comes with a 12-14 book reading assignment, so maybe not for everyone.
Neuromancer?
Brust’s Hawk has an odd aim — Vlad is in effect stealing his right to live back from people who condemned him for treachery several books ago — but it’s beautifully put together even by Brust’s standards for the Jhereg books. He said at a convention a few years ago that he modeled it on an old Flying Karamazov Brothers routine, the Terror Trick, in which one improbably object after another was introduced around other routines then all juggled at the end of the show.
Then there’s the progenitor of all fantasy heists, perpetrated (under contract) by a certain Mr. B. Baggins, esq.
My favorite SF book of all time is Sleeping Planet by William Burkett. Alien invaders put most of the inhabitants of Earth to sleep, and the few people who are immune run a con to free an entire planet. Originally serialized in Analog, and still available in small press edition.
Greg van Eekout’s California Bones series is tons of fun. A fantasy novel with a more contemporary setting.
Hudson Hawk is genre, what with Leonardo DaVinci’s glider and the alchemy.
Lots of fun, too.
Carve the Sky is really being undersold in this description, I think. It’s one of the best visions I’ve ever read of an extensively inhabited solar system with a long history behind it, and the way the book describes both prevailing customs – like the boar hunt through the lunar city – and art objects – such as an ancient sculpture carved by Russian Buddhist monks during the historic period of recovery from a nuclear war – is a fantastic way of giving a sense of the deep history of this future.
It’s a one-of-a-kind book and as far as I know it’s the best thing Jablokov has written. I’m not sure I’d even consider it a heist novel at all – it’s more of a trans-solar-system quest or detective investigation. OTOH if that’s the way to squeeze it into one of these category posts, I suppose I’m all for it.
Patricia Wrede’s Mairelon the Magician has more heists than you can shake a magic wand at.
Only some of them are attempted, or perpetrated, by gentlemen.
I’m glad I at least saw The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes in the comments. If you want an Ocean’s 11 style heist in a fantasy setting then it’s definitely the one to check out. It’s really funny and has a great cast of characters with various magical talents. It’s part of a trilogy but you could stop after the first book and be fine.
Mary Robinette Kowal’s Of Valour and Vanity has an excellent heist, and I just realized, it’s an Italian job.
I don’t categorically like heist stories or their other-crime kindred, but I loved Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. I found the setting vivid, the plots gripping, and the protagonists wonderful to read about. Six demographically diverse young people who have endured severe traumas with realistic impacts, six very different antiheroes who will do nearly anything to keep themselves and each other alive and take down the human monsters who had variously put them through living hells. I found them engaging to an extraordinary degree — their constant snarky banter, their emotional depth and complexity, and their strong and complicated relationships with each other.
I believe the Queen’s Thief series has many thefts across all the books.
Westlake certainly did try to make SF a career for himself. I have a collection of fan publication essays, and he wrote a few of them. The general problem was that, at least early on, he wasn’t very good at it. Mysteries and thrillers on the other hand were selling much better, and he went with his strengths.
@25 – Mistborn is a heist book (team seeks to steal the Empire’s precious substance supplies and, along the way, overthrow the Empire and all of the noble families) … but I agree it is not ONLY a heist book.
I completely agree with @AeronaGreenjoy. Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom were so good. Don’t be fooled by the YA label, they are well written and have depth.
@48 – But there’s no actual heist. The plan was really about overthrowing the Empire.
I do love The Crown Jewels. Who but the often-underrated Walter Jon Williams would decide to combine Space Opera and Comedy of Manners? (Well, Bujold, I guess. But aside from that!)
@48 – there is a heist, in fact two heists – they are, in effect, stealing the Final Empire by overthrowing it and, on a more prosaic level, stealing all of its Atium. Your mileage may vary but it works for me.
Is that a stealth Blackadder quote?
If you like SFF heists, I recommend an indie called A Family Matter by Ox Aaronson.
Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Been a long time since I read it, and I can’t vouch for its quality, but at least I’ll never forget the title of John Jakes “Tonight We Steal the Stars.”
Also surprised no one’s brought up Nifft the Lean yet.
The stainless steel rat books by Harrison!
Did we skip over Six of Crows because it’s billed as YA? That book is phenomenal and very adult in its themes. The heist and plot twists are stunning.
Also, in one of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels, Piemer steals a dragon egg from Fax.
Shadow by Anne Logston is a fun fantasy heist…I went to NorWesCon as Shadow once long ago.
I have to throw out another nod to the Quantum Magician. I only discovered it because I got into a discussion with a guy sitting next to me at a bar about what we were reading. Highly recommended, great heist book.
I just finished Six of Crows. Totally a heist book and also riveting!
Carve the Sky is disguised as a mystery but it is more than that. It is also one of the best-written science fiction novels that I have ever read. True story.
Nobody’s Safe by Richard Steinberg. Seems like a thriller, then morphs into a SF heist story.
The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi is a great one too. Like Six of Crows, it’s called YA, but maybe only because the protagonists are young people?
I perfectly understand why you didn’t put the one heist book I can think of off the dome but this definitely a genre I enjoy in films and I’m coming to love it in books. So I’m glad to check out this hidden gems and hopefully some of the obvious ones in the comments.
6. It’s a grimdark heist book in a fantasy setting. Yes there is a lot of torture and violence but it’s also about a conman and his crew and how they get roped into a BIG con. It is in face a nice mix of The Godfather and Ocean’s Eleven.
I also liked the Palace Job. Great trilogy!
What about the Skeen books by Jo Clayton? I still have the trilogy, and they’re very good.
Mickey Zucker Reichert’s “The Legend of Nightfall” and “The Return of Nightfall” are… maybe more grift-y than heist-y, but they center on a career thief/assassin who gets cursed to PROTECT an idiot prince, and it’s an absolutely cracking story, with a ton of extremely enjoyable twists, and a very wry-humored narrator.
Howzabout Piper’s Space Viking? Some of it’s a revenge story, but some of it is about, well, going viking and raiding rich worlds.
@22, I had no idea An Illusion of Thieves had a sequel. Thanks for the heads up! I loved how the setting felt like Renaissance Italy but had a life of its own. It was a fun book.
Dropping a hellburner on a planet before ordering the people on the surviving continent to hand over their stuff isn’t quite as elegant as the term heist suggests.
Maybe if you’re wearing a raffish hat when you drop the hellburner?
Ooh! Or hacking the rich person’s newsfeed to make them think you dropped a hellburner on the other continent, and that they have to immediately evacuate (conveniently leaving their stuff behind) before they’re scrubbed from the face of the planet by the approaching shockwave.
The Nudists stole the planet Earth and all the treasures of the past in Futurama, once, in a series of heists and scams.
Admittedly in falls into the now-alternate Starwars EU, but I’ve always enjoyed Timothy Zahn’s Scoundrels set between Episode IV and Episode V, which is a Ocean’s Eleven-style heist with Hans Solo in the Danny Ocean role. It’s what I think Solo should have been.
Fritz Leiber’s The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar asks, “Who will heist the heisters?”
Randall Garrett’s Heist Job on Thizar—well, it says so right on the box.
Heinlein’s Glory Road is an elaborate heist job.