The Good Thief's Guide to Paris Read Online Free Page B

reading glasses, her no-nonsense centre parting and the collection of pimples at the corners of her mouth.
    “Go ahead,” I told her.
    The girl gestured at a collection of well-thumbed paperbacks by her side. “Um, will you be writing any more of your Michael Faulks novels?”
    I nodded, surprised that anyone in the audience had read them. “I’m working on a new one at the moment, as it happens.”
    “Oh cool. And . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, it’s just the author picture in these books.” She gathered the top novel on her pile and showed it to me, pointing a bittendown nail at the inside page. “It doesn’t look very much like you.”
    I grimaced. “That’s because it isn’t me.”
    The girl frowned and blinked at the black-and-white portrait image of a suave model wearing a dinner jacket. “But, um, is that normal?”
    “It’s pretty unusual,” I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck and working a sheepish grin. “It was just something my publishers put together really. They thought I’d sell more books that way.”
    I was lying, of course. During the past several years when I’d been writing the Michael Faulks burglar books, I’d always managed to dodge meeting up with my publishers and even my agent, Victoria. It was easy, really, because I was often travelling to new countries, moving on whenever I’d completed a manuscript or carried out a noteworthy theft. Back when I’d submitted the image of the catalogue model for my first novel, it had been a spur of the moment decision, but the photograph went down surprisingly well with my female editor and later my readership, which was mostly women. Truth be told, I’d had some quite eye-watering fan mail over the years and I was almost sorry that with Amsterdam I’d insisted on having no author image at all.
    “It’s kind of . . . weird,” the girl told me.
    It was hard to disagree. I pulled an apologetic face, then looked away and found that I had a handful more questions to answer. Once I’d satisfied my final interrogator, I moved across to the folding card table Paige had organised and sat down behind a stack of hardback copies of Amsterdam , fully prepared to watch the crowd disintegrate before my eyes. To my surprise, a modest queue developed and I ended up signing books and making small-talk for a good twenty minutes.
    Meanwhile, the staff from the bookshop stood off to the side, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and talking among themselves. They were a peculiar bunch: literate and well-educated, widely travelled and drenched in existential angst, yet at the same time living in a building with no hot water or bathroom facilities, several of them wearing stained clothes that looked as if they hadn’t been changed for days. I wasn’t surprised they didn’t buy my book. After all, if they had enough cash to spend on novels, they wouldn’t be living in the bookshop in the first place. And of course, living in the store meant they could read any book for free whenever they chose.
    I wasn’t surprised they were hanging around, either. Half of them looked as if they hadn’t eaten a square meal in weeks and they must have figured they could hit me up for more than just a few glasses of beer. I didn’t mind that. If I was trying to get by on just the sales from my book, it might have been a different matter, but I wasn’t and I didn’t, and the income from my thieving was quite capable of paying for a few plates of hot food.
    I returned my attention to the person stood in front of me. It turned out to be my fan with the pimples and the centre parting. She was the last in line and she wanted all of her Faulks novels signed without buying my new book. I sat there scribbling my name, aware that she was studying my face intently, and then I closed the cover of the final novel and wished her goodnight. I was just twisting the top back onto my fountain pen, turning my thoughts to what I would say to Paige by way of thank you, when a young,