Thief of Thieves is a book that I didn’t read from issue one. Truth be told it only came to my attention when AMC optioned it for a series. I wasn’t reading any other Crime books in issue format at the time, so I decided to give it a shot.

Reading the first four issues in a row ended up being a great benefit to the book as Thief of Thieves took some time to get its hooks into me. Now at the end of the seventh issue I can whole heartedly recomend this book to anyone who has love for heist stories like Ocean’s Eleven, The Killing, or most recently Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of the Score. This is Kirman’s hand at work of course. How often I have read his series contemplating dropping them early on, only to be enthralled by a clever twist in the story that was subtly set up in earlier arcs. The difference in Thief of Thieves is that the twists keep coming with each issue.

This issue focuses on the fallout or percieved fallout of Redmond’s betrayl. Of course the titular character has a yet to show us the presteige. With each page of this book the outright cleverness of his plan is revealed to us, and I loved each moment of it.
All of this would seem trite if it weren’t for the Kirkman and Spencer’s focuse on Redmond’s complex family relationships, which have been the driving force behind the characters actions in this first arc. Redmond’s relationships with his ex and estranged son are the spine of this story, and make him a compelling character to follow.

The being said without Shawn Martinbrough’s hand at Thief of Thieves I may have dropped it before I got this far. His focus on character, specifically Redmond’s, have been the perfect compliment to Kirkman’s style. Redmond is a man playing a roll in his own plan that he is not all together compfortable with. Is he man out for himself, or is there more at play than we know?

I finished the 7th issue of this ongoing series wondering. What next? How deep is the well? Can Kirkman and the rotating writers manage to keep the twists coming? I guess I’ll have to wait for those answers. For now I feel completely satisfied with the first of arc of a series that looks to be staying in my stack for a long while.