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The title character, the thief, is a highly skilled pickpocket who is commissioned, against his will, to carry out three jobs--all of which involve some very delicate picking of pockets, much more complicated than merely lifting wallets--for a crime boss, Kizaki.

If the thief fails, Kizaki will kill him, and the thief has no doubt that Kizaki will follow through.

Kizaki likes to rhapsodize about fate. Is the thief's fate controlled by Kizaki, or is it that the thief is fated to be controlled by Kizaki?

This book is more than just a great crime thriller: it's an interesting meditation on fate and free will.

Was I fated to read this book when I saw it on the library shelves, or could I have seen it and somehow chosen not to check it out? Did my genes, my environment, and all the choices--or seeming choices--that I had made in my life up to the point that I saw this book on the shelf determine that I would check out this book? Did fate decree that I should read this book about fate? Or was it merely an unfated accident of spying this book at the right time without any other distractions which thus allowed me the opportunity to pick up this book and choose to check it out and read it or choose to ignore it? If the events immediately preceding my checking out this book could be replayed over and over up to the moment when I decided to check out this book, would I, each and every time, choose to check out this book, or would there be occasions when I would put it back on the shelf, and if I would sometimes choose differently, what would be the reasons that I chose differently?

Was I fated to type thee very words, or could I, after finishing this book, have chosen not to write this review at all? What is controlling these choices that I seem to make: is it the unseen, deterministic hand of fate, or am I somehow in control of my own choices? Or could it be both?

The Thief provides no answers to these questions; it simply raises the questions. I would like to think that I am in control of my choices, but how could I ever really know for sure? Perhaps we are all fated to think that we are free.