The Thief is the second book in the Games House trilogy by award-winning British author, Claire North. In pre-WW2 Bangkok, at the Gameshouse, a very drunk Remy Burke has made an unwise wager. He has agreed to a game of Hide-and-Seek with Abhik Lee. The Board is the whole of Thailand and the stakes are high: if Remy wins, he gains twenty years of Abhik’s life; if he loses, he forfeits his own memory, all of it.

Abhik Lee is a local with many resources, even without considering the cards the umpires give him. Despite his good command of the language, Remy Burke is a six-foot white Anglo-Frenchman with virtually no resources in the country; the rules don’t allow him to access any off the board. The game is hardly even, but Remy, extremely hungover, has no time to wonder why the Gameshouse has allowed (perhaps even encouraged?) this before he sets out to hide.

Against the odds, Remy is not immediately caught. He does have some assistance: other players can help in minor ways, but of course there will be a future debt to pay; and some of the locals he encounters in his travels around the country are simply good people. And Remy is quick and sharp and determined, and sometimes very lucky. North gives the reader a very clever plot that also hints at what the final book of the trilogy, The Master, will involve. A brilliant read.