Just Thieves

This is the first book I can recall reading where the country in which it is set is not identified; even the narrator, known as Rick, is not named until halfway through. Rick is a recovering addict whose treatment is funded by Froehmer, an elusive figure Rick met through his father, also a thief.

In treatment, Rick met Frank, another thief with a substance abuse problem. The pair teamed up and moved in together, but the reader hears only about the professional side of their relationship. Frank has some useful technical skills, but above all, Rick values his instincts and the care with which he prepares for their assignments.

Rick and Frank now work exclusively for Froehmer, stealing small single items specified by him, although sometimes his orders are relayed by Mobley, an unsympathetic underling. They know little of the organisation, if anything, for whom Froehmer works, so if anything goes wrong Rick is poorly placed to find out who is responsible.

A sudden change to their established routine occurs when, only a few blocks from a house from which they have just stolen some sort of cup, their hired car is involved in a collision. Frank sends Rick back to their base, telling Rick he will deal with the matter and meet up later, but he fails to show up. Rick spends the rest of the book trying to work out what has happened, and how to exact recompense.

Rick’s narration is confined to those areas of his life that he finds worth discussing, so practically nothing is heard about his surroundings, his addiction problems, or of his relationship with Frank outside of their profession. His monologue is curiously flat even where he is clearly invested emotionally in the subject, but the sense that Rick has more to tell than he says provoked my curiosity.

Clues to Gregory Galloway’s style are given in an explanatory endnote, Accomplices and Easy Marks, where he lists a number of lifts from well-known classics, particularly crime classics, that have found their way into the text. He is clearly a fan of crime writing with a sense of style, especially where the outsider’s outlook is underpinned by certain philosophical musings. The effect is to elevate a fairly simple tale of crime into something rather profound.