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When he was twenty-three, Gore Vidal published his second novel, THE CITY AND THE PILLAR, a book that caused an immediate scandal for its refusal to present homosexuality as a pathology and for its central character, a gay man who was neither mentally ill nor a sissy and who failed to do the decent thing and die at the end.. Difficult as it may be to believe at the present moment, book review editors around the nation were so outraged as to ban Vidal permanently from their pages, a ban that proved not to be permanent. He turned to writing mysteries as "Edgar Box," and made a living from them and from various other pseudonymous undertakings.
The Box series has been reprinted; the pulp thriller he wrote as Cameron Kay has languished unread for sixty years. Vidal, who in later years didn't much care for his early work in general, certainly was not anxious to see this one resurrected. He was not wrong. THIEVES FALL OUT is far from a lost masterpiece. But that does not make it uninteresting, if only as an example of an author's cheeky response to the flap his serious novel had aroused.
If he were doing THIEVES now, Vidal would likely have intended it as the text for a graphic novel. The action is swift, the characters large and uncomplicated for the most part, the references to the tropes of pop culture. The protagonist, Peter Wells, awakes in his Cairo hotel room to discover that his drunken adventure of the previous evening has led to his being robbed of his passport and every cent he had on him. Even his travellers' cheques are missing, which in this case is more serious than you might expect, because neither Peter nor the American consul he turns to for help seem to understand how travellers' cheques are intended to work. In any event, Wells is not without resources of another kind and manages quickly to put himself in a position to be hired to do something shady for two Cairo residents, a Brit and a lady of dubious nationality, Hélène, Comtesse de Rastignac. The object he is supposed to concern himself with is, of course, a priceless necklace, stolen from a tomb and naturally cursed. Never mind. The whole thing never made a great deal of sense to Peter, let alone this reader.
He is dispatched to Luxor in pursuit of the necklace, where he meets a young woman, Anna Mueller, reputed to be intimately involved with King Farouk. She is the daughter of a Nazi war criminal, now deceased. Peter and Anna fall rapidly in love, but she is reluctant to commit to him for reasons she cannot divulge. Several people are murdered. The tale comes to a climax during the revolution that unseated the king and ends at Shepheard's Hotel as it is about to burn down.
Wells's chief antagonist in all this is a policeman named Mohammed Ali though it has to be said that it is never entirely clear what he is up to. But at one significant juncture, the inspector is searching Peter for the necklace. His probings become far too intimate for Peter and, either to protect the necklace or his virtue, Pete floors the cop with a fast right and left. The scene seems almost a parody of the climax of THE CITY AND THE PILLAR, this time with the hero in the grip of a homophobic panic. It was at this point that it occurred to me that Vidal might be taking a kind of grim revenge on those who had rejected his novel. Is this what you want in a hero? he seems to be asking. Simple machismo, political naivete, two-fisted, red-blooded, and straight? Well here he is and I hope you like him.
Probably not. Vidal had to earn a living and he knew what was likely to sell. He could turn this one out with little effort, make a few bucks, and go on. Happily, he did go on to better things and in time all was forgiven. The several pages of rapturous appreciations that precede the main text are ample proof of that. None of them, of course, were prompted by THIEVES FALL OUT.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, May 2015
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