The Last Thief

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, the resulting cataclysm
unleashed groups of opportunists who, disappearing into the new Russian
underworld, began to connect with the Mafia and other criminal elements
throughout the world. Prisoners of the former Soviet gulags were thrown
into this emerging situation and either slaughtered or co-opted. Toronto
journalist Lee Lamothe takes for his premise the clash of values between
these old criminals—Thieves—and this “new reality.” There is a
code among the Thieves—a list of dos and don’ts, an
honour-among-thieves catechism as detailed as the Talmud and as
prescriptive as the Koran—that is in danger of eradication. Fyodor
“Bone” Sliva, “the last Thief,” is self-appointed to maintain
this brutal mythic code in the face of the treacherous new reality.

Lamothe’s credentials in the field of international crime are
impressive. He is the co-author of Global Mafia (1995) and Bloodlines
(2001), and has been an adviser to international anti-crime groups. The
world he creates in The Last Thief is brutal and dark and insidious. As
the old underworld morphs into the new, assassinations and terror
attacks increase, and Bone becomes the most important target.

Lamothe has invented a style for his novel in which the “new
reality” group speaks a coded English: “There may be another olden
one, one of the chill, always with snow on his head and ice on his
feet,” says one, referring to Bone. The author’s descriptions are
still more evocative: as Bone travels to escape his enemies, he finds
“the wild Thieves of the countryside and small cities milling in
confusion, but tensile with inbred bones of iron, passing him from hand
to hand as though he was a precious artifact.” The book is almost
pornographic in some of its descriptions, especially since most of the
sex is brutal and harsh. But the misogyny and degradation are not
gratuitous, nor are the destruction and general mayhem of the plot. Did
such things happen? Perhaps not so graphically. But Lamothe makes them
believable.