The Lies of Locke Lamora
Camorr is a city of rotting palaces and floating markets built atop the alien glass canals of an older civilization, ruled by a duke and policed by an underworld treaty between thieves and gentry. Inside that arrangement runs the Gentleman Bastards, a crew of con artists led by Locke Lamora, an orphan trained from childhood by a blind priest of the Crooked Warden to pull off jobs that the Capa of Camorr forbids and never finds out about. Their latest scheme, a years-long swindle on one of the city's noble houses, is unraveling at the worst possible moment: a masked figure called the Gray King is murdering the Capa's lieutenants and forcing Locke to gamble his life and his crew on a far longer con than he ever planned. Scott Lynch's debut combines Renaissance Italian atmosphere, sword-and-sorcery worldbuilding, and a heist novel's pleasure in misdirection, launching the Gentleman Bastard sequence.
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In the canal city of Camorr, an orphan named Locke Lamora is raised by a fence-priest and trained with four friends as a Gentleman Bastard, a long-con crew. Their plan to steal from the city's nobility runs into a masked figure called the Gray King, who is taking over the underworld.
Scott Lynch has published three Gentleman Bastard novels: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and The Republic of Thieves. Four more are planned. The series remains incomplete.
Yes. The Lies of Locke Lamora is widely cited as the foundational fantasy heist novel, with Six of Crows as a YA-leaning successor. Both feature elaborate cons and morally gray crews.
The Lies of Locke Lamora was written by Scott Lynch, published in 2024 by Del Rey.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is 641 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Lies of Locke Lamora takes most readers 10 to 14 hours to finish.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is a standalone novel by Scott Lynch, not part of a series.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
