The Sacred Art of Stealing is a great title for a book as it left me wanting gto know more and when the back cover describes a bank robbery as being Dadaist in style then I was pretty much hooked into buying this book bt Christopher Brookmyre an author I really like as he has a very funny style of writing novels and this book did not disappoint as it was a great read.

What I like about this book is the seemingly complicated plot line with a host of characters all inter linked together with the simple fact that this is also a very simple storyline centred around a bank heist and a boy meets girl and falls in love story that is as old as the hills, the fact that the main character Angelique de Xavia is a police officer and it is the target of her investigation who is also the romantic interest makes for a nice story angle.

The book is fast paced from the outset and there is a black humour that runs through the story which is also strong on satire. Brookmyre has a very fluent writing style that makes reading this book a real page turner and made it a very ahrd book to put down. I liked the character development in this book, this was my first encounter with the character de Xavia and she is a great, self defacing character, a workaholic in a tough male dominated industry you get to see the pressures on her both at work and from her mother who wants her to find a man. These pressures allow for some great lines and interactions with both her work colleagues and family members and the humour has that hard Scottish edge to it that works so well.

The main strength of this book is the way that the plot takes a number of twists and turns and the fact that it does not become overly complicated however there is enough uncertainty in the plot lines that the reader is left guessing and can never be 100% confident of the final outcome.

It is a great combination of thriller, satire and black humour that makes it a book that is well worth looking out for however I could say the same about a number of other Brookmyer books that I have red, this is certainly up there on a equal footing with his previous work.