The Lock Artist

The Lock Artist, published in 2010, is a standalone, young adult crime novel by Steve Hamilton, a prolific crime author known for the Alex McKnight series. The Lock Artist won the 2011 Edgar Award for best novel.

Plot Summary

The Lock Artist is narrated in the first person by Mike (or Michael), a young man who possesses an extraordinary talent for picking locks and cracking safes. He has not spoken a word since a trauma he survived at eight years old, when his father, who was separated from Mike’s mother, raped Mike’s mother and murdered her lover. To protect himself, Mike crawled inside the family’s gun safe and locked himself inside. Mike’s father carried the safe to a nearby river and attempted a murder-suicide by drowning, but Mike was rescued.

After Mike’s childhood trauma, he is sent to live with his Uncle Lito. At home with Uncle Lito, Mike develops a growing enthusiasm for picking locks. At the end of the school year, a popular jock at Mike’s high school asks Mike to help him and his friends breaking into a football rival’s house. Mike picks the lock on the house, but police arrive, and he is apprehended.

Mike’s sentence, referred to as “restorative justice,” is to spend the summer working for Mr. Marsh, the owner of the burglarized house. As Mike tackles his grueling work, he meets Amelia, Mr. Marsh’s daughter, and swiftly falls in love. Eventually it becomes clear that Mr. Marsh is entangled in illegal financial dealings and is being threatened by a crime boss known as “the man in Detroit.” In exchange for forgiveness of some kind of debt, he plans to offers the man Mike’s services.

Mike is sent to Detroit to study lock picking and safe cracking with a man known only as “the Ghost.” During his apprenticeship with the Ghost, Mike encounters an FBI agent named Harrington Banks, who is investigating the Ghost and the Detroit operation. At the conclusion of Mike’s apprenticeship with the Ghost, he receives a box of color-coded pagers. Criminal gangs can contact Mike on these pagers, and they must pay a portion of his fee to the man in Detroit, who is Mike’s contractor.

Mike travels to the Philadelphia suburbs to perform an expertly choreographed robbery with a gang that contacted him on the blue pager. The robbery ends in Mike’s arrest, but he picks the lock on his handcuffs and escapes back to New York. He is soon called to Los Angeles and meets the white pager gang, a group of four college-aged criminals. Mike feels a sense of belonging with the white pager gang, and they welcome him as a member of the group. The gang’s ringleader explains that they first encountered the man from Detroit when attempting to rob his yacht, where he runs a high-stakes-only poker game. The man from Detroit spared them and put them in touch with the Ghost.

Mike spends months with the white pager gang. He then responds to a call on the red pager and travels to Ohio to carry out a hit with a group of men who work closely with the man from Detroit. Mike does not know their names but nicknames them Sleepy Eyes, Fishing Hat, and Tall Mustache. The operation ends with Sleepy Eyes killing his two compatriots because they were cooperating with the FBI. The gruesomeness of the crime shakes Mike’s spirits. He track down Amelia, detailing the events of his criminal life. Amelia inquires into his childhood trauma, and Mike drives her to Detroit to the house where the trauma occurred. Inside the abandoned house, he retells the event by drawing the scenes on the wall.

After his harrowing experience, Mike is ready to accept the offer of help from Banks. First, he returns to the white pager gang. Gunnar, one of the gang’s members, wants to make a second attempt to rob the yacht, as he has a contact who works on board. This time, they succeed. The next day, Mike finds two members of the gang murdered; Sleepy Eyes is holding a third at gunpoint in front of the safe containing the score from robbery. Sleepy Eyes was Gunnar’s contact aboard the yacht and betrayed him. Mike calls Banks, hopeful that Banks will be able to track the signal and rescue him. Sleepy Eyes shoots and kills Gunnar, then demands Mike open the safe. Just as Mike is about to open it, Banks appears and saves his life.

Mike is been sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison. At the end of the novel, he is nearly 10 years into the term. He is still in contact with Amelia and plans to reunite with her, and possibly start speaking again, when he is released.