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Books

Brothels, hashish, a poisonous scorpion, a cursed necklace: all excuses for macho antics in the Valley of the Kings

Gore Vidal’s deservedly forgotten pulp thriller, now resurrected after 60 years, is so bad it’s good

25 April 2015

9:00 AM

25 April 2015

9:00 AM

Thieves Fall Out Gore Vidal (writing as Cameron Kay)

Titan Books, pp.237, £16.99, ISBN: 9781781167922

Gore Vidal has form as a crime writer. In the early 1950s, when his sympathetic literary treatment of homosexuality had brought him into critical disfavour, he turned to writing sprightly detective fiction under the name of Edgar Box. It’s much less well-known that he also took a dip in the far murkier waters of the pulp thriller.

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