The Lies of Locke Lamora

The Lies of Locke Lamora, the first book of the Gentleman Bastard series written by Scott Lynch, is a novel that successfully mixes heist stories with the fantasy genre, only failing when it starts to treat us with the same condescension with which the protagonist tries to deceive his victims.

Locke Lamora is an orphan boy who, after being recruited by the Thiefmaker of the city of Camorr, starts to live with a gang of kids, committing small thefts to their master in exchange for food. His pro-activity and ambition, however, start to irritate the Thiefmaker, who decides to sell him to a priest. Lamora, therefore, rises in his criminal career, going from a simple pickpocket to a position in the Church.

He’s a skillful young man with rustic features, whose ironic smile makes him “look like a slender wall-gargoyle.” Lamora’s personality is already outlined during the initial events, where his creativity in crafting ingenious, outlandish plans is displayed alongside a worrisome carelessness regarding his own life. As one of his friends describes him: “If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing.”

It’s precisely these traits that form his tragic narrative arc: Lamora is a thief of ambition and intelligence, but one with the habit of neglecting the possible side effects of his extraordinary actions, eventually putting those he loves most in danger – and that includes himself.

The novel follows the preparations for one of Lamora’s greatest heists: stealing the fortune of Don Lorenzo Salvara. His plans, however, may be thwarted by the sudden appearance of a sinister individual, who has been murdering the main criminals of Camorr: the mysterious Gray King.

The book is structured with flashbacks of Locke’s time growing up in the Church serving as brief interludes between his many plans to rob Dom Salvara and protect himself from the Gray King, shedding new light on his actions and motivations. Current events, in turn, are not always told in chronological order either, so as to allow for some twists that work with our lack of information: we often don’t know whether what is being said is true or even if the people in the scene are really who they claim to be.

At the other end of the spectrum, the narrative also works with dramatic irony, leaving us more informed than certain characters in some scenes. This is used for comic effect, such as when Lamora says to his victim, “We have a saying – that undeserved good fortune always conceals a snare,” and we get the irony of the veiled alert, but also to build suspense, such as when we know in advance that Lamora is walking defenseless to a trap.

The Lies of Locke Lamora is also rigorous with the use of colors. Red, for example, which is usually associated with danger, appears here at the beginning of scenes where something really bad is about to happen, making the color work as an alert to us, increasing the tension whenever it appears – be it as the color of a poison bag, or as the light cast over a character before a confession is about to be made: “Here Locke paused and fiddled with his little lamp, making the red glow waver on his face.” Finally, red is also associated with an important concept in the story, mixing the ideas of revenge and justice and painting them all with blood.

There’s also some great use of symbolism throughout the novel. The fight with a shark that Locke Lamora watches alongside Don Salvara, for instance, reflects his predatory relationship with his victim – and the shark is even revisited later, when the animal reappears as the same symbol, but in a more… literal manner.

However, the real strength of The Lies of Locke Lamora comes from – as is customary in heist narratives – the many twists and turns of the story. There are several elements hidden in plain sight that can surprise us not just by the unexpected manner in which they resurface, but also with the brutality of it all. The sudden changes in tone mark the biggest surprises: since our main character is a very confident young man, he conveys a sense of security and invincibility at all times. We believe everything is going to be okay, that he’s got everything handled. But that couldn’t be further from the truth…

As for the fantastical universe presented here, the city of Camorr stands out for its evident Italian inspirations. It’s a typical Venetian city, built with numerous canals and alleys with “more gangs than it has foul odors,” marked by an immense social gap, with groups of orphans sleeping in cemeteries, having to rob people to survive, while nobles relax and amuse themselves in floating orchards. The Italian influence in the setting is also evident in the characters’ names, in their obvious obsession with wine, and in the widespread presence of the mafia.

The novel, however, falters in the way it transmits this information to us. Its first hundred pages are particularly problematic, loaded with the worst kind of exposition, with long, boring info dumps where characters often remind themselves or others of past events and the characteristics of the city they’ve lived in their whole lives. Take this first dialogue between Locke Lamora and Don Salvara, for example:

“There have been three invasions of Emberlain in the past two hundred and fifty years. Let’s be frank; the succession rites of the Kingdom of the Marrows always involve armies and blood before they involve blessings and banquets. When the Grafs quarrel, the Austershalin mountains are our only landward barrier, and the site of heavy fighting. This fighting inevitably spills down the eastern slopes of the mountains. Right through the vineyards of the House of bel Auster. How could it be different this time? Thousands of men and horses coming over the passes. Trampling the vineyards. Sacking everything in sight. It might even be worse, now that we have fire-oil. Our vineyards could be ashes half a year from now.”

Only two lines after this dialogue, there is another one that’s even larger and equally didactic. Worse still are the instances in which flashbacks are used to explain the context of situations that could very well have been inferred from the character’s general reactions and dialogue. The moment a “bondsmage” appears for the first time is the most egregious one: the flashback interrupts the main story just to explain what a bondsmage is, breaking the flow of the narrative for something we could already understand (the details could have been transmitted elsewhere). Not everything needs to be like Gardens of the Moon in terms of exposition (an engaging puzzle for us to solve), but it doesn’t need to be this condescending either.

The Lies of Locke Lamora, then, is a great fantasy novel with a complex, well-developed story and a fascinating, tragic protagonist. But it could have been even better if it had shown just a little more confidence in us.

September 02, 2025.

Review originally published in Portuguese on September 09, 2016.