The success of Three Cities and of Salvation insures a certain interest in Mottke the Thief, although the thinness of the plot and the rather unsympathetic drawing of the central characters destroys the appeal of the earlier books. From the point of view of characterization in the picture of Mottke, whose life is one of deceit, crime, petty pilfering, cruelty and lawlessness, until love makes him turn to the light, it is alive and interesting. Beyond that, it fails. Jewish market and the readers of the earlier books, within limits.