A Penniless Stranger. A Dead Man’s Double. A Master Thief’s Legacy.
Ward Sharlow is down to his last sixty-eight cents in a cheerless Chicago hotel room. Desperate and hungry, he answers a bizarre newspaper advertisement seeking a man in a brown suit and lavender necktie who crossed the State Street bridge at exactly five minutes to ten. He finds himself face-to-face with John C. Atwood, a wealthy manufacturer who has just seen a ghost—his own son, Calvin, recently reported drowned in a Montana lake.
The Offer: Ten thousand dollars to play the part of a dead man.
For two weeks, Ward must impersonate Calvin Atwood to secure a massive inheritance. Dressed in Calvin’s gray Norfolk suits, Ward enters a world of Lake Shore Drive luxury and high-stakes deception. But the Atwood mansion is a labyrinth of secrets. Between a senile grandfather who instinctively knows the truth, a hunchbacked secretary with a hidden manuscript, and a valuable Indian emerald guarded by iron webbing, Ward is surrounded by shadows.
Intertwined with Ward’s struggle are the legendary chronicles of Bayard DeLancey, the “King of Thieves”. As Ward pores over a forbidden document detailing DeLancey’s impossible heists—from the diamonds of Paris to the high-speed rails of Nebraska—he realizes that his own masquerade is part of a much larger, more dangerous game.
As the clock ticks toward the hour when Ward must open a red-sealed letter from his own mysterious father, the past and present collide. When the “drowned” heir returns and the master of disguise is revealed, Ward must navigate a maze of “wheels within wheels” to discover his true identity and survive a night where every face is a mask.
A classic of pulp mystery and convoluted plots, Thieves’ Nights is a breathtaking journey through a world of stolen gems, secret vaults, and the triple identity of a man who didn’t know he was a hero.