Reviewed by Scott Tobias
May 28th, 2004
One reason many crooks are apprehended is that they brag about their crimes, unable to contain their tall tales after a few beers. As a cat burglar to the rich and famous, swiping glittering baubles from enough stars to fill a block on the Walk Of Fame, Bill Mason possessed special skills, but discretion may have been the best weapon in his arsenal. Even as his exploits were grabbing front-page headlines, with tales of million-dollar heists and audacious robberies of Cleveland mob bosses and Phyllis Diller (twice), Mason kept his mouth shut, dutifully returning to the ordinary roles of husband, father, and real-estate manager. Working without a partner, Mason betrayed his loved ones and fenced tens of millions in stolen goods, but the man could be trusted with a secret.
It's perhaps fair to say that for this reason alone, Mason lived to release Confessions Of A Master Jewel Thief, his cool-witted and frequently jaw-dropping memoir, written with the help of crime novelist Lee Gruenfeld. Throughout his long stint as a criminal and (later) a fugitive, Mason was disciplined enough to keep a low profile and not spend conspicuously, which not only kept the authorities in the dark, but also preserved his double life in the plausible realm of suburban normalcy. But now that all prison sentences and statutes of limitation have expired, he has finally emerged from anonymity, triumphant save for a few painful twinges of regret. Confessions reads like a night's worth of the greatest barstool tales ever told, as Mason spins his own legend without the need for embellishment.
Offering an irresistible taste of the derring-do to come, the book opens with a prologue worthy of a Jules Dassin heist picture: In order to gain access to an upscale beachside condo owned by Dr. Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum, Mason breaks into a neighboring apartment from the roof, inches across a rain-slickened 15th-floor ledge, hops onto the Hammers' balcony, and slides open the unlocked patio door. This last detail, to Mason's continued amazement, is a running theme throughout the book, which marvels at the common-sense lapses, security gaps, dumb luck, and "failures of imagination" that made the impossible hilariously easy for him. The book continues with episodes of escalating stakes, from a botched gas-station job in his youth to a monster safe at a miniature-golf course to a multimillion-dollar score off a dozing widow.
Mason happily unfurls his impressive résumé—the big-name marks (Robert Goulet, Bob Hope, Truman Capote, Johnny "Tarzan" Weissmuller), the slips from FBI agents, the use of Christie's and Sotheby's as fences for stolen goods—but the real "confessions" here are how simple his robberies could be. Need an address? Go to the public library. Want a master key or the combination to a lock? Write a polite note on company letterhead. And forget about the jewels themselves: In nearly every case, they're right out in the open, because high-society types assume their upper-floor penthouses are impenetrably secure. Once Mason finally gets caught in a bogus sting operation, Confessions Of A Master Jewel Thief bogs down slightly in legal snares and family upheaval, but that's mainly because it's hard, as a reader, not to root for his success. After all, Mason wasn't an average hood—he was an artist.
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