Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery

by Jason Buhrmester (Three Rivers Press, 2009)

This nostalgic heist novel, set in Baltimore and New York City, invents a clever solution to the infamous unsolved robbery of Led Zeppelin in 1973.  The facts are these: Led Zeppelin was staying at the Drake Hotel in New York City during their Madison Square Garden tour dates.  On the last of those dates, more than $200,000 was stolen from the band’s safe deposit box at the hotel.  The money was never found, and the hotel was sued for damages.  Aside from the names of Led Zeppelin band members and staff, everything else is the result of Buhrmester’s imagination.         

"I want to rob Led Zeppelin.”

Patrick, a 20-year-old Baltimore native, returns home from New York City to assemble the old gang for one last job.  He returns on the day one of the guys, Alex, is to be released from jail after serving eight months for breaking and entering.  The rest of the group consists of Frenchy, the manager of a record store and rock ‘n’ roll impersonator, and Keith, a car stereo installer and thief.  The four friends worked for Tony Mancini, a “three hundred pound caveman” whose various business endeavors were designed to steal from wealthy customers.  They were thieves.  They are still thieves.  And Patrick has a plan for a heist that none of them will be able to resist (even if it was Patrick last idea that got Alex locked up).  With the help of Alex’s Uncle Danny, a master and novice criminal at once, the gang will navigate a violent and strangely-religious world in an attempt to pull off the greatest heist in rock ‘n’ roll history.     

The characters are criminals, and, although the gang members are concerned for one another’s safety, they live in a criminal’s world.  It is a dangerous, violent, manipulative world in which people ask how you are and where you are going so they can rob you or keep a mental record of how to destroy you later, should they have to.   

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

Among the typical (but not tepid) twists and turns of a heist novel plot is an effortlessly evolving critique on the nature of theft in our world.  On the very first page, we learn that Patrick would “sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night to make a lunch just so I could pocket my lunch money.”  The lunch money became Black Sabbath records.  This high school scam was probably put aside when he realized he could steal the food and the records.  And the car stereo.  And whatever else he wanted sitting unguarded in the places in which people kept their nice things.  If you ask him to watch your purse, it will be returned to you minus any cash.  You will find it in your heart to forgive him.

The last mention of theft is an accusation mentioned throughout the book: Led Zeppelin stole many of their songs from other bands.  “Someday somebody’s going to clean these British boys out for what they’ve done.”  Frenchy, who earns money on the side covering and copying rock ‘n’ roll icons insists, “Everyone borrows, man.  That’s just music.”  In Patrick’s world, the lesser feel justified in stealing from the greater, and vice versa.  In the world of rock ‘n’ roll, the greater feel justified in stealing from the lesser, and vice versa.  Perhaps, all bullshit aside, this is the great cycle of our own hypocritical world – we all steal from each other.

If you steal a song from someone and do better with it than they did, is it yours?  How about someone’s guitar?  Is there a difference?  Did Jason Buhrmester steal this book about theft?  In the acknowledgements the author thanks his brother for “creating so many of the ridiculous situations in this dumb little book” and a long list of people “whose lunatic behavior may have found its way into these pages somehow.”  In this way, Buhrmester acknowledges the thieving nature of a writer’s process.

As you read this book, the plot will twist and turn along with your grasp on what is right and wrong.  Either road should be an engaging one for any day tripper.  The book will also have you tugging on the character's t-shirts to get the f@#k out of there.