In 1953, 27-year-old Gore Vidal published a pulp crime novel, Thieves Fall Out, using the pen name Cameron Kay. Vidal wrote it after publishing his controversial and "immoral" novel The City and the Pillar. It's now being republished with Vidal's name on the cover, and it's pulp through-and-through.
Peter Wells, from Salem, Ore., wakes up in a small, dingy room, a hot July sun beating through the window. He drank too much absinthe at a bar last night in Cairo, Egypt, and has been robbed. He came to post-World War II Egypt on a freighter hoping to find work in the burgeoning oil business, but was offered little help at the consulate. In a nearby hotel bar, he meets an Englishman, Mr. Hastings, who says he can offer him a job that pays well, which Wells accepts. It involves going to Luxor to help smuggle out of the country "a treasure! Perhaps the most valuable single piece ever found" in Egypt--the necklace of Queen Tiy.
From here, Vidal pushes all the classic pulp buttons. He introduces an array of sinister and exotic characters: the mysterious Comtesse de Rastignac; the piano-playing hunchback Le Mouche; the corrupt Inspector Mohammad Ali; and the love interest, the beautiful German singer Anna Mueller. There's espionage, murders, a classic bait-and-switch and even a possible plot to kill Egyptian King Farouk. The writing is workmanlike, the plot right out of Casablanca--but who cares! It's all great fun. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher