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Summary
Summary
ON THE EVE OF REVOLUTION, EGYPT IS A TINDERBOX.
WILL ONE AMERICAN LIGHT THE SPARK THAT SETS IT ABLAZE?
Gore Vidal was one of America's greatest and most controversial writers. The author of twenty-three novels, five plays, three memoirs, numerous screenplays and short stories, and well over two hundred essays, he received the National Book Award in 1993.
In 1953, Vidal had already begun writing the works that would launch him to the top ranks of American authors and intellectuals. But in the wake of criticism for the scandalous content of his third novel, The City and the Pillar , Vidal turned to writing crime fiction under pseudonyms: three books as "Edgar Box" and one as "Cameron Kay." The Edgar Box novels were subsequently republished under his real name. The Cameron Kay never was.
Lost for more than 60 years and overflowing with political and sexual intrigue, Thieves Fall Out provides a delicious glimpse into the mind of Gore Vidal in his formative years. By turns mischievous and deadly serious, Vidal tells the story of a man caught up in events bigger than he is, a down-on-his-luck American hired to smuggle an ancient relic out of Cairo at a time when revolution is brewing and heads are about to roll.
One part Casablanca and one part torn-from-the-headlines tabloid reportage, this novel also offers a startling glimpse of Egypt in turmoil -- written over half a century ago, but as current as the news streaming from the streets of Cairo today.
Author Notes
Gore Vidal was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. on October 3, 1925 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. He did not go to college but attended St. Albans School in Washington and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1943. He enlisted in the Army, where he became first mate on a freight supply ship in the Aleutian Islands.
His first novel, Williwaw, was published in 1946 when he was twenty-one years old and working as an associate editor at the publishing company E. P. Dutton. The City and the Pillar was about a handsome, athletic young Virginia man who gradually discovers that he is homosexual, which caused controversy in the publishing world. The New York Times refused to advertise the novel and gave a negative review of it and future novels. He had such trouble getting subsequent novels reviewed that he turned to writing mysteries under the pseudonym Edgar Box and then gave up novel-writing altogether for a time. Once he moved to Hollywood, he wrote television dramas, screenplays, and plays. His films included I Accuse, Suddenly Last Summer with Tennessee Williams, Is Paris Burning? with Francis Ford Coppola, and Ben-Hur. His most successful play was The Best Man, which he also adapted into a film.
He started writing novels again in the 1960's including Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckenridge, Burr, Myron, 1876, Lincoln, Hollywood, Live From Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal, and The Golden Age. He also published two collections of essays entitled The Second American Revolution, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1982 and United States: Essays 1952-1992. In 2009, he received the National Book Awards lifetime achievement award. He died from complications of pneumonia on July 31, 2012 at the age of 86.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Reviewed by S.T. Joshi Some years after the publication of his bestselling novel The City and the Pillar (1948), Gore Vidal (1925-2012) felt that critics and publishers had become prejudiced against him because of the controversial subject matter of that work (a pioneering treatment of homosexuality), so he published an array of pseudonymous novels to generate income. Some of these have become popular, notably the three mystery stories published under the pseudonym Edgar Box (1952-54). Two other novels published as paperback originals, however, are little known, because Vidal refused to allow them to be reprinted, though he eventually acknowledged their authorship. One is A Star's Progress (1950, written under the pseudonym Katherine Everard), a lurid novel about a movie star who fails to find happiness in spite of her fame. The other is the fabulously rare Thieves Fall Out (1953), which appeared under the gender-neutral pseudonym Cameron Kay and is now available again in this welcome reprint. The novel focuses on Pete Wells, a former Army officer, who falls in with a bluff Englishman named Hastings and Hélène, Comtesse de Rastignac. The two of them offer Pete a cut of the profits for sneaking an immensely valuable artifact (the necklace of Queen Tiy) out of the country. The implausibility of this scenario is deliberate, and throughout the story Pete wrestles with the mystery of why these smart and sophisticated people have entrusted him with this delicate mission. Matters are complicated by Pete's falling in love with a young nightclub singer, Anna Mueller, the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi officer. Vidal reportedly composed Thieves Fall Out on a Dictaphone, which perhaps accounts for his somewhat bland, affectless prose. There are no dates in the novel, but Vidal's original readers would have recognized that it is set in the summer of 1952, when the corrupt King Farouk of Egypt was overthrown by Gamal Abdel Nasser (with some help from the CIA). Vidal, who had visited Egypt in 1948, deftly interweaves the political turmoil of the moment into his tale. Readers expecting the acerbic wit of Vidal's satires (Myra Breckinridge, Live from Golgotha) or the immense erudition and epic sweep of his historical novels (Burr, Lincoln) will no doubt be disappointed by Thieves Fall Out. But it perfectly fulfills its humbler purpose by providing a thrill-a-minute roller-coaster ride, with vital characters acting out their parts in a vivid and exotic setting. It would make a fine action film. S.T. Joshi is the author of Gore Vidal: A Comprehensive Bibliography and the editor of the American Rationalist. © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
This lackluster crime novel, published pseudonymously by Vidal under the name Cameron Kay, originally appeared in 1953 as a paperback original. (Vidal was short of funds at the time and turned to genre fiction for quick cash.) The story finds its hero, Pete Wells, at loose ends in Cairo. Out of money after being robbed, he meets a pair of mysterious characters (one of them an alluring woman) who convince him to go to Luxor and pick up an ancient artifact from a shady fellow and then bring it back to Cairo. Along the way, Vidal delivers some violence, some soft-core sex, some intrigue. It's good-natured, relatively slick crime fiction in the pulp style, but it's unengaging and thoroughly unmemorable not nearly as satisfying as Vidal's trilogy of crime novels written atabout the same time but under the pseudonym Edgar Box (Death before Bedtime, 1953). This is a literary curiosity, to be sure, but it is likely to be of interest only to Vidal completists.--Pitt, David Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
By the early 1950s, Vidal had embarked on the career that eventually earned him the reputation as one of America's literary gadflies. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), had provoked scandal: it was about a gay man who didn't suffer for his transgressions. So between 1952 and 1954, Vidal hedged his bets, producing four mysteries under pseudonyms. Three by "Edgar Box" were reissued long ago. The fourth, by "Cameron Kay," was not. Set in Egypt just before the 1952 revolution that overthrew corrupt King Farouk, this pulp novel tells of an American adventurer who accepts a commission to smuggle an heirloom necklace out of the country. It's a fiction of stock types: a corrupt police officer, a fake countess and her phony English gentleman accomplice, a mystery woman with whom the hero almost at once falls head over heels in love. The resolution is flat. Not everything that happens seems plausible. Thieves shows little sign that Vidal would turn out be a writer of interest. Verdict There may be a historical rationale to purchase this out-of-date book but little other reason.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
