Just Thieves by Gregory Galloway

Published by Melville House on October 19, 2021

Rick steals things for a man named Froehmer. Rick’s father was corrupt. Rick accepts dishonesty as a way of life. Froehmer was his father’s good friend and Rick trusts him. Trusts him enough, anyway. Rick isn’t cut out for a nine-to-five job so stealing helps him support his daughter. Denise, Eva’s mother, doesn’t want anything to do with him, but Rick gives money to Denise when he has some to spare. He spends time with Eva when Denise allows it, which isn’t often. Rick accepts his situation just as he accepts the other circumstances of his life.

Rick started small, stealing from construction sites, working his way up to residential burglaries. As Rick made progress in his craft, Froehmer asked him to steal more valuable items that were usually within easy reach, like a rare coin displayed on a desk. Rick doesn’t ask questions about the object’s value or destination because it’s not his business. Nor does he care who the victim might be because, in his view, stealing doesn’t really hurt anyone. We’d all be better off if we weren’t so focused on acquiring and keeping property, wouldn’t we? The morality of crime, and the deeper question of what it means to be moral, pervades the novel, but Gregory Galloway doesn’t hammer the reader with the philosophy of larceny.

At a meeting for recovering addicts, Rick meets Frank, a counselor who gives life and morality more rigorous and intellectual thought than Rick can muster. They are living together when the novel begins. The text is never explicit about their relationship, but when Frank’s sister mentions that Frank’s mom doesn’t know, it becomes clear that they are lovers. Frank steals watches and knows how to disable alarm systems. He helps Rick steal for Froehmer because he doesn’t want Rick to be caught. Frank is cerebral, which is both a benefit and a curse. Frank plans, Frank takes precautions, Frank makes sure they don’t get caught. But Frank also needs to figure things out. When a dead horse appears and disappears in front of the hotel where they’re staying, Frank can’t let it go.

If you added an intelligent plot to a Liam Neeson movie and gave it the tag line “People who have everything fighting over nothing,” you’d get something like Just Thieves. Galloway tells the story in the first person from Rick’s perspective. The narrative style is simple and plain spoken with the elegance of noir. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. So like every other idiot, I bought a gun.” “We spend all our time waiting for one thing to stop and waiting for something else to start.” In addition to crafting his own memorable lines, Galloway borrows a few choice phrases from classic works of literature and noir; he credits them in the end.

The action heats up when Frank is apparently troubled by something that Froehmer asks them to steal, something that seems entirely valueless to Rick. Toward the end, Rick thinks he’s being set up for crimes he didn’t commit, leading to a surprising reveal of the person who committed them. To get himself out of a messy situation, Rick makes his life messier, straining his self-image as someone who does no harm to others.

The story jets along from key moment to key moment, sometimes flashing back to establish Rick’s character in greater depth. The simplicity of the story and of its few characters is appealing, although the simplicity masks the deep questions that Rick ponders as he considers his life with and without Frank. Just Thieves is a smart, compelling story told from the perspective of a person who regards himself as uncomplicated, as portrayed by an author who understands that every person is complicated.

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