Niels Hammer

Having fought to extricate himself from a devastating relationship with a charming but fickle woman, and desperate to reach a state of serenity, William leaves her to live alone in an old dilapidated house by the sea and devote himself to music and astronomy but his distraught state of mind induces him to seek temporary relief and he meets Dorothy.

A mutual revelation, burglary and murder, nature and unconditional love Ralph, a painter of nature and illusions, has a clear enough glimpse of a thief who wakes him to fall in love with her as he recognises her innate independence. After a strenuous search he finds her but she assaults him viciously the instant they meet. Discovering that she has killed a man during a burglary he leaves her with no choice but to listen to his arguments about how they were fated to meet, and to prove his integrity he becomes her accomplice, and she realises that his absolute commitment makes her reciprocate his feelings spontaneously. As a Post Post-Modernist novel, grounded in the felt reality of experience, it explores unconditional love, art as self-insight and the wonder of nature - to suggest consciousness as the origin of existence; but ‘It Takes a Thief’ also outlines the necessity of empathy and the struggle for survival within sustainable means in a consumer society intent on self-destruction.