Surely the most famous MacGuffin in film noir appears in 1955's Kiss Me Deadly, in which the action revolves around a mysterious box whose contents ultimately prove to be of little importance to the story. Likewise, in Just Thieves by Gregory Galloway (As Simple as Snow; The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand), a MacGuffin drives the action but will concern readers far less than the personal turmoil of the object's pursuers.
As Just Thieves begins, Rick and Frank, a pair of low-level crooks and recovering addicts, are on an out-of-town job in an unnamed American city. Their boss has promised them an easy assignment, but Rick, the novel's narrator, is still antsy: "The job was always easy. It was everything else that turned out to be the problem." Sure enough, Rick and Frank's errand is temporarily derailed by the presence of a dead horse in the street outside their hotel. Behind schedule now, Rick manages to break into the target house and find the small statue that he's been instructed to filch, but after he gets into the rental that Frank is driving, they're hit by a speeding car. While Frank waits for a tow, Rick, pilfered statue in hand, makes it back to the hotel, but only readers who don't know their noir will believe that things proceed smoothly from here.
Like the best noir, Just Thieves places the same value on plot and characterization. It could pass as a golden-era noir if one overlooks the occasional references to wi-fi and texting. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer