The Burglar

David Goodis’s gripping book “The Burglar” examines the idea of a criminal organization acting as a substitute family. Nat Harbin, the main character, is a family man whose relatives are a group of robbers. He chooses to give up his trade and his partners to pursue a woman who hypnotically seduces him.

But getting away from his “family” turns out to be difficult. This novel, a hallucinatory masterwork of crime, honor, and strange loyalty, reveals Goodis’ unsettling affinity for the losers in life.