"Hysterically funny...a glorious paean to good books and to those who shepherd them into the world, a tale of redemption as cheering as Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys.” – The Chicago Tribune

Ian Minot, an aspiring writer with a low-paying day job at a coffee shop in New York, is enraged by the easy literary success of his girlfriend, a beautiful Romanian short story
writer, and even more so by Blade Markham, whose "memoir" Blade by Blade, about his drug addiction and his time as a gang member, becomes a bestseller. Convinced that Blade's book is a fabrication, Ian becomes increasingly dejected--until he's presented with an irresistible proposition. As he becomes embroiled in an elaborate scheme to create a fake memoir of his own, Ian becomes wrapped up in the hypocrisies of the publishing industry and realizes that fact and fiction can be dangerously intertwined. Full of humor and suspense, The Thieves of Manhattan is a truly original skewering of the book publishing industry.