SBD: Thieves as heroes

[jmc_bks]

It is Monday, and time for Beth's SBD.  

I borrowed La Nora's Homeport from the library over the weekend -- I saw a copy on a display, and couldn't remember if I'd read it before.   Anyway, the hero is a thief.  And I've decided that's just one profession that doesn't work for me for a hero.  I don't find anything heroic about stealing; even Robin Hood is a hard sell for me.  (Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham utterly overshadows Costner's Prince of Thieves.)

But I like Roarke from the In Death series, don't I?  Well, yes.  But he makes no excuses about what he did, and was mostly straight by the time Dallas appeared in his life.  Plus, as Tiko says in Strangers in Death, Stealing's lazy.  

In Homeport, Ryan steals because he can.  And his mother (a devout Catholic) justifies it because his ability to steal is a god-given gift.  Plus, it paid for college for his siblings.  That doesn't work for me as a justification, and I think it is a slippery slope.  Because if theft is okay because it is a natural skill, then all kinds of other horrendous behavior must be okay, by the same token.  Sociopaths who have a god-given ability to torture should be let on their merry way?  I don't think so.  And paying for your siblings' educations?  Nice.  But the parents could've, I don't know, handled their finance and family planning better, rather than relying on criminal activity to fund their children's educations.

I don't know.  Reading this book (or trying) really just pissed me off, because it more or less excused criminal behavior because the hero loved his family and was, well, the hero.  And his redemption/conversion in the end?  Not convincing.  I don't believe that he's given up theft and gone straight.

I'm pretty sure that there are a couple other thief heroes or heroines in La Nora's backlist, and I'm of two minds about them.  She's a very good storyteller, and usually I can buy into her characters and their motivations.  But I'm not sure if I'm willing to buy into these particular characters.  

Comments

[rosario001.livejournal.com]

Ugh, this is the only Nora book I hated. The justifications pissed me off (the thing with the mother offended the hell out of me, and I'm not even religious) and the worst thing was the way he and his family were so happy to scold the heroine for having the gall to suggest stealing was wrong.

Scolding the heroine

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Exactly! The mother's scold of the heroine really irked me. My take on that scene was that the mother was more or less telling her she was being bourgeouis and putting art/objects above people.