A Stainless Steel Rat is Born - Harry Harrison

Advantages: Good background if you are a fan
Disadvantages: Reads like it has the depth of a short story

...ambitions of Jim diGriz from a teen disaffected with the boredom of his pig farming home world "Bit O' Heaven" to a fully qualified rat. Jim's search starts with an unsuccessful attempt to learn crime by getting arrested and put in juvenile detention and progresses to attempting to find a criminal mastermind mentor to teach him his trade. For some reason the book reads as a short-story rather than a complete book despite it being longer that some ...
...If you are already a rat fan then you will be happy to read this and will probably get a lot out of it - if you are reading it as a stand alone book then it will be puzzling and probably disappointing. For the latter I would suggest you read a few others before this. General Info applicable to all the books: Although not vital it is better to read the Stainless Steel rat series in order (the dates are in the other reviews) as most of the books ... Read review