It Takes a Thief (1968 TV series) motion picture "To Catch a Thief", directed by Alfred Hitchcock; both of their titles stem from the English proverb "Set a thief to catch a thief". (Or as is more widely used, "It takes a thief to catch a thief".) "It Takes a Thief," which was created by television writer Roland Kibbee, featured the adventures of cat burglar, pickpocket, and thief Alexander Mundy, who steals to finance his life as a polished playboy and sophisticate. He is in prison when the U.S. government's SIA (the fictional Secret Intelligence Agency) proposes a deal to Mundy: steal for the government in exchange
To Catch a Thief (novel) To Catch a Thief (novel) To Catch a Thief is a 1952 thriller novel by David F. Dodge. The scene is the French Riviera, and the time is 1951. In August 1951, French police come to arrest American John Robie at his villa in Vence near the Côte d'Azur. He escapes, leaping over the garden wall. In the late 1930s, Robie was a daring, supremely athletic burglar, known as "Le Chat" ("the cat"), who specialized in jewel thefts from hotels and villas on the French Riviera. He was caught and sent to prison in 1939. But during the German occupation