Gore Vidal's Thieves Fall Out should have died a quiet death

This pulp novel, rushed out under a pseudonym in 1953 and picked up for rerelease in 2015, is a third-rate work that my friend Gore would have preferred to languish in obscurity

In the early 50s, Gore Vidal found himself short of cash. There were days, indeed, when he wasn't sure where the next bottle of champagne might come from. For a start, his "real" novels, published under his name, had been failing to find an audience big enough to support his high living. (He had recently moved into a stately home on the Hudson River called Edgewater, not Rhinebeck in New York.) So he turned to pulp fiction of various kinds.

Vidal was a fast writer, capable of spinning out a mystery or piece of pulp fiction in a few weeks, often using a Dictaphone. In 1953 he published Thieves Fall Out, written under the pseudonym of Cameron Kay (Kay was his grandmother's maiden name, and Cameron Kay was, in fact, Gore's great uncle, an attorney general in Texas). A paperback publisher brought out the book in 1953, and it quickly faded. For years, this book was known only to Vidal scholars and true fans, many of whom possess the frail paperback. Now a house called Hard Case Crime in New York will bring out a new edition, and it has stirred some backlash.

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