The Art of Stealing
Reviews
By Gabino Iglesias
I’ve always thought horror and noir share a dark, gloomy heart, a world where ordinary people are thrown into bizarre circumstances. Both horror and noir portray characters struggling to survive, to make things better, to convince themselves that they’re doing what they must and everything will be okay. Gregory Galloway’s Just Thieves is pure noir. In fact, it’s the kind of noir that would have Jim Thompson nodding and smiling; it’s that good.
Rich and Frank meet while recovering from addiction and become good friends. When they move in together, Rich brings Frank into his business: stealing things for a man named Froehmer. The two men are strange and solitary, but they develop a relationship that works for both. They stake out houses, have conversations about life, break in to places to get what they need, and give whatever they get to Froehmer.
It’s a relatively easy gig, and Rich and Frank make enough to get by and even go on vacation from time to time. That is until one job goes terribly wrong. The duo gets in a car accident as they’re leaving the scene of a robbery, and that starts a streak of awful luck. When Frank vanishes with the thing they stole, Rich worries. But Frank has done this before, so he doesn’t panic. Then Frank is found dead from an overdose.
Rich has a hard time believing his friend had started using again, so he does a bit of investigating. He learns that Frank’s arm had been all scratched up, which convinces him that the overdose wasn’t accidental. Rich wants to get to the bottom of it, but Frank was the brains of the operation, so that’s easier said than done. As he develops a relationship with Frank’s sister, Rich tries to think like his friend used to in order to figure out what happened to him, but what he discovers puts him in danger.
Just Thieves is packed with superb lines, a few surprises, keen philosophical observations, and crisp dialogue. Galloway is the kind of writer who can turn waiting in a car or having a drink alone into an interesting scene, and there isn’t a single extra word in this novel. However, great dialogue and solid lines are only tips of the proverbial iceberg. Just Thieves works because it’s incredibly layered. Rich is still hurting from the death of his father, who was a big presence in his life. Moreover, Rich has a daughter and an ex-, and they also play huge roles in his life. In fact, he starts working for Froehmer so he can protect his daughter. Because of all this, his relationship with Frank becomes that much more fascinating.
Great noir is often about ideas and exploring rationalizations; it’s more concerned with the why of the murder or the theft than the act itself. In this regard, Just Thieves shines. Rich and Frank have intense discussions about why stealing is okay—how it’s basically human nature. Much of the narrative takes place in crappy apartments, cars, and bars, but the mental spaces it occupies are much richer. In a way, this book is a deep exploration of the many angles there are to stealing, and the fact that every brilliant explanation or rationalization comes from a crook makes it even better.
I write down quotes while reading so that I can come back and use them in my review. Just Thieves is full of incredibly memorable passages like this one:
We are all born thieves. Eve and the apple and all that. Jacob and Esau. The Bible has plenty of thieves in it; Christ is even described as arriving like a thief, and he’s crucified between two thieves, one of them even gets promised Heaven. I’ve been in enough hotels to know the Gideon. And I know that if there’s something to be stolen, it’s been taken at one time or another. Buddha’s tooth, St. Catherine’s head, Jesus’s foreskin, you name it. Museums are filled with the work of thieves, things stolen from ancient civilizations like Greece or Rome or Egypt. The Romans stole from the Egyptians, obelisks and whatever else they wanted. Hell, there’s a pyramid in the middle of Rome. Entire countries have been stolen. America stole most of its land, from Indians and Mexicans and whoever else stood in their way (‘Property is theft!’). Everybody steals, especially the rich. What was it that Meyer Lansky said? “Look at the Astors in the Vanderbilts, all those big society people. They were the worst thieves.” Nobody got rich working.
Just Thieves is a novel in which stealing is an art and the secret agendas of shady characters complicate things. But it’s also a story about friendship that looks at the way addiction can destroy a family while also exploring the way in which we often do really bad things for all the right reasons. Galloway is clearly a student of noir, and he hits every note perfectly, from the dark opening to the gloomy middle to the shocking climax. But Galloway pulls off an even more impressive feat here. A novel about crooks is one thing, but a novel about crooks that becomes impossible to put down because it makes you think about your own moral compass is something else altogether. That’s exactly how captivating Just Thieves is. This outstanding novel is certain to earn Galloway a spot on the list of noir’s modern masters and maybe make you steal a thing or two.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints, Coyote Songs, The Devil Takes You Home (forthcoming summer 2022), and the editor of Both Sides: Stories from the Border. You can find him on Twitter @Gabino_Iglesias.
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