The Lies of Locke Lamora

The Lies of Locke Lamora, the American writer Scott Lynch's fantasy novel, appeared in 2006 and opens the Gentleman Bastard series. It is set in the city of Camorr, which is based on late medieval Venice but stands on an unnamed world, and it is the first of a sequence of books about the same crew, with the present-day plot interleaved with the crew's earlier history.

Camorr is a canal city built on the ruins of an older civilisation, where the capa in charge keeps the peace and takes a cut of everything. Locke Lamora leads the Gentleman Bastards, a small gang of thieves who were raised by Father Chains, a priest whose god is the Crooked Warden, the patron of thieves. They make their living running elaborate confidence games on nobles who can afford it.

A new player called the Grey King is taking over the criminal underworld, breaking the unspoken agreement between the gangs and the Duke's government, and the Gentleman Bastards are caught between them. Their latest scheme has put them in the way of both, which turns a set of entertainingly arranged swindles into a fight they did not choose. Two stories run through the book: the present crisis and a set of chapters describing the history of Camorr and of the crew's own training.

The series continues in Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves, and the first book establishes Camorr, the Gentleman Bastards and the rules they work by. It is a heist novel in a secondary world, and it is written as the opening of a series, with each later volume moving the crew to a different city.