It’s at the very climax of The Readymade Thief when all its tantalizing hints bear fruit: all the talk of secret societies, conspiracies, the works of a cryptic artist from a hundred years ago, and yes, even the title of the book itself. It is an exciting, fitting moment that paints the protagonist in a sympathetic and admirable light—quite a feat, because for the first 90% of her story, she is a passive and uninteresting mess.

Seventeen-year-old Lee is a quiet, socially-challenged high school girl with what seems like an inborn predilection towards kleptomania. She has few friends, although her thieving skills earn her a certain notoriety among her peers as someone who could get them what they want, from expensive sweaters to drugs. Her best friend is a popular, manipulative party girl who kickstarts the plot by getting Lee arrested for a crime she didn’t commit.

This begins a series of events that send Lee bouncing from one bad situation to another for most of the rest of the book. The tone of the story shifts wildly as Lee experiences being imprisoned at a youth detention center, living in a shelter for homeless kids, being taught the ways of a master thief by a wise old man, coping with teen pregnancy, learning how to be an urban explorer, going house squatting, and unraveling a cult-like conspiracy revolving around the works of real-life artist Marcel Duchamp. Each of these threads could have made for an entertaining tale, but the impact of every component is lessened by the inclusion of the rest. It is difficult to pin down any consistent theme from the story when there are so many. Horrifying crimes and murders are perpetrated by cartoonish, almost-literally moustache-twirling bad guys, making the tone all the more confusing.

In most of these situations, Lee simply allows things to happen, taking initiative only when there’s something that catches her fancy that can be stolen, or when she feels that her trust has been betrayed—rightly so or otherwise—and she goes off in search of the next unpleasant event that will send her spiralling further into nothingness.

By the time Lee grows into a proactive heroine and marches off towards the book’s action-packed final act, it is too late to care. It is also too late to care about the story itself when the majority of its most interesting twists and plot points are revealed only in the final pages during a villain’s self-indulgent monologue. It is evident from this final portion of the book that Augustus Rose knows how to write an exciting adventure story with great action, suspense, and characterization. It’s just perplexing how everything that leads up to that part is slow and disjointed in comparison.

The Readymade Thief contains a well-researched and legitimately intriguing mystery that is resolved in a thoroughly satisfying manner, but all the good ideas are wrapped within endless strands of many other potential stories that all fail to live up to their promise. Give this a read only if you are willing to put up with all the strange tonal detours, because there is a good historical mystery buried within.