A review of “A Burglar’s Guide to the City,” by Geoff Manaugh
[Written for the Wall Street Journal, 2016]
A dozen years ago, my Boston apartment was burgled. Using a hinged or hydraulic bar, someone wedged apart my doorframe, rendering the locks useless, pushed the door open, and walked right in.
That burglary, it turns out, was typical, in that A) it messed me up and B) it was not especially ingenious. I remember thinking I’d have felt much better if, rather than taking a square punch to the chest, I’d been the victim of a more elaborate swindle.
A crafty defeat, like Houdini’s “sofa game,” I could respect. The old ruse works like this: some guys knock on the door of a wealthy family, and tell them — hurriedly, because they’re busy — that they’ve inherited a piece of furniture from a distant relative. They return an hour later, admitting they got the wrong place. Right name, but wrong block. Sheesh, what a day. By then, a petite accomplice, who was hiding in the couch, has nabbed some valuables and re-hidden herself. There’s also a new adaptation: someone squirms into a suitcase, and has a friend load it into the cargo hold of a bus. En route, he wiggles out, robs the other baggage of goodies, and sneaks back into hiding. A Polish man was caught doing this a few years ago in Barcelona, in part because he was less than petite. Yet another reason to avoid MegaBus.
One burglar crawled through dog doors. Another slipped through the drop-off box of a dry cleaning shop. One broke into a store, robbed it, then cut through the drywall, and robbed the adjacent store, too. One did this in a whole block of Maryland townhouses. In LA, burglars have been known to cut out the back of a dumpster, roll it beside a building, and tunnel into a vacant shop from there — affording the burglar, his tools, and his debris a tidy hiding place.
Jeffrey Manchester, aka Roofman, preferred to break in from above. He’d figured out the nighttime routine at McDonald’s, and routinely startled employees by descending and demanding the daily take. More elaborately, of course, some have tunneled in from below. In 1976, after two months of digging, Albert Spaggiari and accomplices stole $8 million in cash and goods from the vault of a French bank. They started in a parking garage. Ten years later, the Hole in the Ground Gang absconded with roughly $2 million by tunneling into a Hollywood bank from a storm sewer. To get rid of 3,000 cubic feet of excavated dirt, they washed it away nightly in storm water. The gang got away on Suzuki four-wheelers with filed-off serial numbers, and their crime remains unsolved.
One burglar liked to register a fake, legal-services-sounding company, then tell a construction company that a lawsuit over broken water pipes necessitated his examination of blueprints. Another just burgled the building where the construction company kept its records. One, infamously, was also an architect, and so could just casually ask bank owners to see vault blueprints. In Toronto, one learned to deduce the layouts of apartments, and hence their value, by studying the placement of fire escapes.
Burglars have gained entry by climbing up drainpipes, and then absconding on ledges, or in air ducts, or in the ceiling. They’ve gotten away merely by knowing what floors have unlocked emergency fire-exit doors, and how to navigate between maintenance rooms, laundry rooms, boiler rooms, and employee staircases.
At least one commercial burglar took photocopies of vacation rosters, to facilitate the timing of the residential variety. One just waited for football games. One awaited certain business conventions, then robbed hotel rooms en masse by spoofing magnetic door-card readers. A canny burglar may look at your electric meter, and learn to discern between frugality and vacancy. Burglars have lured victims out by pretending (online) to be a hot date, and tracked would-be-victims’ whereabouts via Facebook. One just slapped a GPS unit on a jewelry-store-owner’s car. My burglar had no style.
———
A good journalist must partly imitate a burglar. He must aspire to gain access into new arenas, and then carefully case the joints, distinguishing between loot and junk. In service of illumination, he must become a voyeur, which means, before all else, that he must infiltrate. And so it is disappointing that Geoff Manaugh, the author of “A Burglar’s Guide to the City,” failed in this first obvious task.
Manaugh goes to a rare gathering of locksport enthusiasts — guys who like to pick locks just for fun, sometimes at Locktoberfest — and introduces himself to the lead guy. And? That’s it. He visits the John M. Mossman lock collection, and spends a whole hour scraping through the archives. And? That’s it. He goes on a helicopter flight over Los Angeles, hoping to witness a chase, but ends up sightseeing. Does he arrange another flight? He does not. He mentions the International Breechers Symposium, but doesn’t attend. To elevator school he does not go. But he goes to Vegas, and “reports” on all the security cameras there.
He reports that one interviewee seems embarrased, and another seems ashamed. I don’t read nonfiction to be told what the world seems like; I read it to learn what it is like. Manaugh doesn’t find out. What’s the point of a humble journalist, ashamed to ask dumb questions?
Like a bad tour guide, Manaugh summarizes the look and sound of a city, but never lets you leave the hotel to go see and hear and taste for yourself. He’s light on obvservations, heavy on citations. (Often, they’re “textbook examples.”) His frame of reference is Hollywood heist movies. It’s armchair journalism, shining no new light on anything or anyone.
And so, Manuagh turns essayish. He argues, primarily, that burglary is a new urban science that threatens our understanding of architecture. In this, he is unconvincing. He claims burglars suffer from a spatial disease, compelling them to misuse buildings, and that in using cities more aggressively than the rest of us, they also use them better. Consequently, he says burglars show us more possibilities than architects do — but he doesn’t bother defending this argument. Architects have shown us a lot of possibilities. Among obvious assertions — that the threat of burglary has led to an arms race, and that that race shapes the “built environment” — he makes some foolhardy ones, claiming that burglars bend cities to serve their own devious needs. That’s what lobbyists and developers do.
In parsing the minutiae of burglary law and the definition of architecture, Manaugh does reveal a funny philosophical truth: cities get the type of crime their design calls for. But he undermines his position with this: “why particular buildings are chosen rather than others remains ambiguous and not easily answered.” And then he admits his book looks at the exceptions, rather than the rule — which is odder still for a supposed guide.
My favorite of Manaugh’s claims is his allegation that architects suffer from arrogance in thinking that only they are concerned with built environment. But he never comes out and says: all architects-in-training should take a law-enforcement seminar on burglary.
———
In the eleventh century, burglars tried to force out residents by waving magnets over hot coals. In the middle ages, burglars hoped to evade capture through witchcraft, by deploying arms stolen from corpses. Today, burglaries spike during new moons, when it’s darkest, and when Canada Post workers are mugged, police usually suspect assailants of going for Crown keys, which open half a city’s buildings.
In the movies, when burglars click a stopwatch at the beginning of their crimes, they’re using the Lamm technique, developed by Herman Lamm in the 1920’s. It failed him at the end of 1930. In the 90’s, Los Angeles suffered an average of one bank robbery every 45 minutes. A great proportion were “stop-and-robs:” hold-ups of banks beside freeway off- and on-ramps. Burglars could never get away with that in New York City, and thus: the blessing of traffic.
For every speedy getaway, there’s Joe Loya, who served seven years in prison after robbing 24 banks, after which he usually ran across the street, hid in his parked car for a few minutes, and then calmly drove off. Nobody (almost) suspected that. Because getaways are so circumstantial, there are few general principles regarding the best kind, except that after a successful one a good place to hide is under the restricted airspace of an airport.
England has the highest burglary rate in the EU, and Italy is close behind. In the last 20 years, burglaries in England have halved. That’s due partly to burglar traps, which have been run since 2007 under the direction of a a Chief Constable from West Yorkshire. Some are so enticing they’ve been hit on their first day of business. That’s because burglaries are crimes of impulse and opportunity. Two thirds of residential burglaries are committed by drug addicts.
FBI agents, pulling off burglaries of their own, may use tiny rakes, to comb footprints out of carpets. State law varies, but — tiny rakes aside — in general it’s illegal to possess or transfer actual burglary tools like bump keys. Underwires in bras make good lock picks, but bristles from the brushes of street-cleaning trucks are even better.
Given a choice between tunneling through bedrock or tunneling through earth, a burglar will probably choose earth, which is why bank vaults in Berlin (sand) and London (clay) are more vulnerable in this regard than vaults in Manhattan (schist). Given a choice between a neighborhood designed by Descartes and one designed by Dali, a burglar will probably pick the former (so as not to get lost or stuck on a dead-end), unless he goes for the latter (because they tend to have lighter police patrols.) Given a choice between a house with the lights on and one with the lights off, a burglar will probably go for the one with lights off — which is why my parents plug their lamps into timers — unless he discerns that the lights are in fact on said timers. Far better is wallpaper with embedded closed-circuit wiring, if you can stomach wallpaper any better than timers.
What, more practically, makes a home burglar-resistant? A house on a cul-de-sac: probably good. A house on a corner: not as good. Near a school: good. Near a forest or park or subway stop: not good. A house set farther back from the street than neighboring houses: not good. A house with a garage or back door (especially a sliding glass door): not good. Storm windows: good. Architecturally unique: good. A house with the same layout as every other house in the hood: not good. A house sporting a BEWARE OF DOG sign: good. Sporting the logo of an alarm company (legit or not): not good, because it says you have something worth protecting. Sporting a magnetic fridge-calendar on which VACATION is clearly labelled: not good, because it tells a burglar exactly how much time he has to pillage.
If it’s too late, and you already have a really nice estate, consider altering the floor plan on record, omitting staircases or rooms the way early American maps omitted certain Maine harbors. A security camera alone won’t do, because it can easily be muzzled. Thirteen years ago, thieves in Antwerp defeated one with a broomstick, tape, hairspray, and a piece of styrofoam, and escaped with $50 million worth of diamonds. Or install what some embassies have: safe rooms made of high-strength concrete with bauxite and metal wire mixed in, to resist sledgehammers, drill bits, C4, RPGs, .50 caliber bullets, and thermic lances.
Some good news from the arms race: over the last two decades, burglaries in New York City have decreased by 85%. Bad news: the tips above are all that’s offered in “A Burglar’s Guide.” More bad news: Marc Weber Tobias, America’s ultimate lockpicker, discovered vulnerabilities in the locks the US government uses to secure nuclear sites.
———
Somehow, Manaugh wrote a book with no exciting sentences, no fresh metaphors, and not one word obscure enough to require a dictionary. Worlds are always shadowy, codes are always secret, linings are always silver, and those caught have red hands. Sentences have usually been rendered passive. The author is so good at using the word “is” that he is the owner of a few paragraphs with almost no other verbs. Jargon and vagueness abound. “Literally” appears literally more than a dozen times. As often, he writes that something is interesting, which tends to spoil the fun. Intent on guaranteeing complete spoilage, he tells us other things are surreal, hilarious, fabulous, incredible, brilliant, astonishing, awesome, ingenious, surprising, remarkable, extraordinary, and absurd. (He tells us that security for the 1984 Olympic games in LA was fascinating — then moves on.) Most annoying is Manaugh’s inability to pick a single adjective. He is not happy to describe something once when he could describe it three times, thrice, in triplicate.
Was the editor hiding in a dumpster, tunneling toward some other career? If real burglars don’t pick locks anymore, why’s it in the book? If the material presented at a three-day workshop on urban escape and evasion was rudimentary, why let the author drone on about it? If the author’s experience does not contribute to the story, why keep it? A definition of the word “sequence?” References to Foucault and Heidegger? An exploration of “useless conceptualism?” Few quotes, and only in plain flavor? I’ve read better blogs and Wikipedia pages. I expected more from nonfiction, especially from FSG.
The basics — burglary rates and losses, as well as the world’s biggest heists — are missing. The first emotions — the feelings of betrayal and paranoia that tend to manifest in burglary victims — don’t appear for nearly 200 pages. Psychologists who specialize in post-burglary recovery are not interviewed. What the author wonders is not included.
Details and context are absent. (Manaugh doesn’t tell us how long that snaking Hole in the Ground Gang’s tunnel was, or how wide, or how long it likely took to drill — but tells us it was sophisitcated and fantastic. Does it compare to the drug tunnels near San Diego, or those under Gaza?) He nudges up to conflict — suggesting that the LAPD uses fuzzy stats to demonstrate the effectiveness of helicopter surveillance — then drops it. He brings up a gaping legal loophole: because LA banks are not required to have security guards, managers did the math, and realized it was cheaper to let some money get stolen than to pay for some rent-a-cop — in effect outsourcing private security to local police and the FBI. He leaves it there — without looking into attempts to change the law, or how other cities have dealt with same issue. He doesn’t examine the effectiveness of security companies. He doesn’t explain how the lockpicks used in the service of one president ended up on display in library of the subsequent one (or mention that the Watergate door that was picked and duct-taped open is at the Newseum.) An editor should have intervened.
Why go on about it? Because this explains the terrible overwhelming feeling I get at bookstores, the feeling of: how in the hell do I wade through all the chaff? This book doesn’t change the way I look at the world. It changes the way I look at publishers. FSG claims it’s looking for new voices that “defy categorization and expectation.” The subject seems fresh, but it’s as obscure as Lincoln. A million screenwriters have already combed through the material, and successfully entertained us with it. An editor should have seen through the ruse. At least the lesson, plain in any heist movie, should have clear: the trickier the heist, and the bigger the prize, the better you need to prepare and execute.
———
I was in journalism school when my Boston apartment was burgled, and though it messed me up, it didn’t wipe out a writerly insult I’d just picked up: a good book could be so many things, but a bad book was just a big bag of sentences.
Burglaries take place in places. There’s no spatial theory we’re failing to comprehend. Burglars have sharp urban vision, sure, because they’re hunting for weaknesses to exploit. “A Burglar’s Guide” is neither curious nor lucid nor illuminating. On minor points, the author rambles. On major ones he just misses. It’s soupy journalism, with a weak argument. Willie Sutton was funny. Geoff Manaugh is not. I wouldn’t suggest it to my dad. I’d advise him to save some money, and go see a few movies.
Manaugh writes that heists captivate us because of what they reveal about architecture’s power, and that the stream of bank-robbing movies and books suggests something is lacking in our relationship with the city. But that’s like claiming test pilots fly to improve their relationship with the air. Those stories captivate because they feature all the elements of a story: sequential drama, tension, intrigue, imagination, suspense, mystery, cunning, conflict, and cajones.
The promise of burglary is not a world is permeated with secret passages, as if we’re all still seven years old, playing hide and seek. The promise of burglary is getting rich quick. To miss that is to miss the whole ball game. Anyone writing about inanimate objects should have foreseen as much. And so the subject, like one of those safe rooms, proved impenetrable.