Likewise, that a billionaire’s best bet to pull off this gig are five morose 20-somethings makes one wonder what the benefit of being a mysterious oligarch is these days.

If just one had even muttered “Yolo!” it would be more believable. They all say yes to Will, for no good reason. 'The Candy House': Jennifer Egan's latest may be the smartest novel you read all year You see, Will needs a squad, so he puts together a team of hyper-educated, well-to-do Chinese Americans: his beautiful sister Irene, a charming sociopath/public policy major at Duke her pal Lily, an engineering major at Duke who also happens to be a drift racer old friend Daniel, who is pre-med at UCLA and whose father just so happens to be an FBI agent in the art crimes division (no, really) and Alex, an MIT drop-out who now has a lucrative Silicon Valley job. But when it comes to their external conflicts – and the heists themselves – the novel collapses almost immediately. Li parses her characters’ internal conflicts expertly. And in that way, the novel works exceptionally well. It’s a killer set-up that allows Li to examine issues of Chinese American identity, colonialism and the very nature of who can ever truly own art. 'Let's Not Do That Again': Grant Ginder spills on his new scandalous political thriller When Harvard art history student Will Chen witnesses a brazen robbery of priceless Chinese art from the Sackler Museum in Boston, two things happen: He pockets a tiny jade artifact for himself and finds himself recruited by a shadowy Chinese billionaire with an offer: Steal five Chinese zodiac fountainhead pieces from museums around the world – or, well, steal them back, since the pieces were looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace – and upon their safe return home, receive $50 million.

Li’s debut “Portrait of a Thief” (Tiny Reparations Books, 384 pp., ★★½ out of four, out now), a heist novel that seems to be fighting its literary aspirations on every page, which is frustrating since its central conceit is original and compelling. It's a question I couldn’t help but ponder throughout Grace D.

What’s the use of being a master thief if you’re miserable all the time?

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