Something...Missing

(This may be a possible selection for the next Books and Beer.)

How do you take a burglar and make them completely redeemable? How do you take a thief and make them the hero of your novel? How do you make someone with crippling shyness a love interest?

You make your main character a burglar with OCD (and an interesting and slightly difficult childhood) and a willingness to only steal things that the owners, or clients in the protagonists parlance, will never notice being gone.

There you have it. That is the complete story of Something Missing by Matthew Dicks.

This is a very fun book and I laughed out loud several times, and chortled continuously while reading it. It also reads much more quickly than the 292 pages that it is listed at. I was able to complete it, with a dinner break, between late afternoon and early evening on Sunday, but YMMV.

For being slight, and very funny, the novel does offer some interesting questions, and the author does not go out of his way to answer them. Which, in this case, is a very good thing, because answering the questions about what makes someone good or bad could only lead to a type of moral absolutism that is condescending and banal.

What makes the book come alive is the main character, Martin, who considered the people he steals from (mostly things like a bag of tomatoes here, some toilet paper there) clients and friends, albeit in a very bizarre way, and the action starts when Martin decides that he can "give back" to his clients, by making their lives better. His sweetness, combined with his very vivid oddness (flossing five times a day), make him one of the more enjoyable characters I have followed in the past couple of years.

If you are looking for something fun, quick, and interesting, I suggest purchasing Something Missing at your Local Independent Bookstore.