Thieves Fall Out -- Cameron Kay (Gore Vidal)

This is another of those books that's been on my shelves for many a year, at least 40 and probably more.  The original Gold Medal edition, that is.  I don't know when I found out that Cameron Kay was really Gore Vidal, but that was long ago, too.  I still wasn't tempted to read the book, though.  It took the new edition from Hard Case Crime to tempt me into doing that.

As you can see, the covers for the two editions are very different.  For once, the current one is the more lurid and considerably less representative of the contents.  NTTAWWT.  

Vidal didn't want to have the book reprinted, but after his death, his estate agreed to the reprint.  It was written back in 1952 and published in 1953, the year that Vidal published three books under pseudonyms.  Rumor has it that he may have "written" them using a Dictaphone.  I've never read the other two books, one of which is the first in a series of three books by "Edgar Box," described by one reviewer as "Spillane in mink."  That's almost enough to tempt me.  Almost.

But I digress.  Thieves Fall Out is a novel of international intrigue, set in Egypt in 1952 at the time of a big political upheaval is about to begin, the time when King Farouk was ousted by General Nasser.  We geezers will remember that King Farouk was much in the news in the U.S. because of his lavish lifestyle, which figures in the novel.  But I digress again.

Pete Wells, a fellow American down on his luck, finds himself in Egypt, broke and knowing no one, having gotten drunk and mixed with the wrong crowd.  So he goes to Shepheard's, a hotel where he's heard a sharp guy might pick up a fast buck.  Almost as soon as he hits the bar, he spots his mark, and before long the guy, a British gent named Hastings has a proposition for him.  It involves a mysterious errand (is there any other kind?), for which Wells will be well paid, and a beautiful, mysterious brunette.  Further complications involve a crooked cop named Mohammed Ali, a dwarf pianist, a mysterious, powerful figure, and a beautiful, mysterious blonde.  Intrigue, love, and betrayal ensue.

Reading this book, I got the feeling that Kay/Vidal was sort of doing the plot by numbers.  Every beat is hit, and most experienced readers are going to figure some things out long before Wells does.  What's best about the book is the local color.  Vidal had visited Egypt, and he describes various locations vividly and memorably.  The characters are types, but they're just different enough to be interesting, and Vidal moves the story along efficiently for the most part.  This isn't top shelf Gold Medal storytelling, but it's certainly entertaining enough to be more than just a literary curiosity.  Check it out.