A Burglar's Guide to the City

At the heart of Geoff Manaugh's A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: the city as seen through the eyes of robbers. From experts on both sides of the law, readers learn to understand the city as an arena of possible tunnels and picked locks and architecture itself as an obstacle to be outwitted and second-guessed. From how to pick locks (and the tools required) to how to case a bank on the edge of town, readers will learn to detect the vulnerabilities, blind spots, and unseen openings that surround us all the time. This simultaneously allows us to view the city from specific buildings and individual rooms to whole neighbourhoods through the privileged eyes of FBI investigating agents and security consultants, people dedicated both to solving and to preempting these attempts at devious entry. Full of absurd and marvelous stories of heists and capers, A Burglar's Guide to the City offers a kind of criminal X-ray of our built environment. Never again will readers enter a bank without imagining the vault geometry, or visit a museum without plotting ways to bring their favourite painting home with them.