Thick as Thieves: A Brother, a Sister--A True Story of Two Turbulent Lives - Hardcover

Thick As Thieves tells the story of two unforgettable people and the bond that gave each a special place In their crazed and shifting worlds. Here are a brother and sister - often charming and always complicated - whose fates intertwine through years of American change as she takes on New York's literary scene and he chases romance and adventure in a haze of drugs and larceny.
As kids who shared a flair for the dramatic, Steve and Veronica Geng joined forces against their irascible father - a colonel In the Quartermaster Corps. Through the books, movies, and music they loved, the two kids escaped their dad's disparagements and the postwar doldrums of working-class Philadelphia in an era of duck's ass haircuts, American Bandstand, and the Lucky Strike Hit Parade. As they grew, their paths diverged: Veronica headed off for the Ivy League at the University of Pennsylvania and Steve wound up in France. While his sister studied Salinger, he donned a leather jacket, skipped school, and hit the bebop clubs of bohemian Paris, idolizing jazzmen and finding fast cash and amours dangereux in the streets of Pigalle.
As the sixties unfurled, the Gengs Joined forces again - in Greenwich Village where young people were throwing off clothes and conventions. The siblings came of age against a tapestry of would-be writers, artists, and aspirants of all varieties. Veronica - brilliant and vulnerable - excelled at fleeing Intimacy and picking the wrong men. But as time passed, hanging out at the Hip Bagel, she dreamed herself up as the woman she had always wanted to become - a real writer with a voice unlike anyone's.
Steve haunted Washington Square and became a local legend for his musical ear and prowess as a record thief. Soon he was making his way through the urban underworld while his sister hit the heights, becoming one of the New Yorker's most idiosyncratic writer/editors, known for a devotion to the written word so passionate that other editors dove for cover when she went on tirades.
Filled with all the things they loved, spanning decades of unresolved personal drama and fun, Steve Geng's memoir of the life he and his sister shared moves from his prison sentences to her doomed romances, from Rikers Island to rehab, from the halls of the New Yorker to the set of TV's Miami Vice (where Steve makes a bid for acting glory). We hear the rants of the Colonel, the malicious invective of publishing, the patter of criminals. Steve delivers a memoir that will lift your spirit, kick you in the shins, and help you remember the person who understood you the most.

Steve Geng grew up an army brat in Philadelphia and attended high schools in Heidelberg, Germany, and Orleans, France. He was a career thief (Record Steve), a saloon keeper, and an actor (who appeared in episodes of TV’s Miami Vice and Jonathan Demme’s film Miami Blues). He’s an active member of Manhattan’s recovery community, and the brother of the late New Yorker humorist Veronica Geng. Thick as Thieves is Geng’s first book. He lives in Manhattan.