Thieves Fall Out - Gore Vidal as Cameron Kay

 After the controversy stirred up by The City and the Pillar (reviewed below) Gore Vidal tried his hand at pseudonymous genre fiction - the Edgar Box novels (murder mysteries including Death Likes It Hot, also reviewed below) and the single, hard-boiled noir crime thriller Thieves Fall Out (1953), written as Cameron Kay.

What we have is a blend of American action man abroad and The Maltese Falcon.  The latter is especially noticeable.  The Claude Rains character is Inspector Mohammed Ali of the Cairo police, the Peter Lorre character is Le Mouche, pianist at Le Couteau Rouge, who has fingers in every pie, and the equivalent of Sydney Greenstreet (which Greenstreet could never play) is a wall-eyed collector-cum-smuggler called Said.  I suppose the Ingrid Bergman character is the mysterious German Anna Mueller.  The Maltese Falcon is definitely the necklace of Queen Tiy which Peter Wells, our hero, is hired to smuggle out of Egypt.

Just as The Maltese Falcon gains extra frisson from the background of the war and potential invasion, Vidal exploits the tensions in Egypt under the appalling King Farouk and sets his climax against the Black Saturday uprising of January 1952.

Is Peter Wells Humphrey Bogart?  No, he's more John Garfield - a working class bruiser, former oil wildcatter and wartime soldier.  He is relatively dumb, easily seduced, and happy to operate on the fringes of legality.  He is good fun.

Vidal in the Box books was bright and amusing.  On the evidence of Thieves Fall Out he could have given Mickey Spillane and Donald Westlake a run for their money in noirish thrillers. It goes without saying that he is a marvellous writer, probably the best American novelist of his era, his only real rival being Norman Mailer.  An excellent read, another great from the Hard Case Crime series.

Death Likes It Hot - Gore Vidal as Edgar Box

 Mix Agatha Christie with the bitter wit of Gore Vidal and what do you get?  You get the young Vidal writing as Edgar Box and this, the third of his three genteel mysteries featuring PR man Peter Sargeant II.

Sargent is invited to spend a week at the Long Island mansion of wealthy widow Rose Veering.  It's a select group of guests: Rose's niece Mildred and her artist husband Paul Brexton; Allie Claypoole and her brother Fletcher, and later their nephew; and noted penwoman Mary Western Lung.  Tragedy strikes when poor Mildred, who has suffered mental health problems, drowns whilst swimming.  Is it an accident or perhaps suicide?  The police seem convinced that it's murder.  Then Fletcher Claypoole is most definitely murdered.  The police make a swift arrest but Sargeant, who has form as an amateur sleuth has other ideas.

It's charming, funny, clever and, obviously, beautifully written.  Great fun.