In Just Thieves (Melville House, Oct.), Galloway explores the psychic toll of a life of crime.
Where did this novel come from?
I wrote a scene about two guys sitting in a car, discussing what you would take if your house caught on fire, and how you would probably take something that had more sentimental value than actual monetary worth. It got me thinking about those two guys and who they were. I figured they were thieves, watching a house they were going to rob, but they weren’t stealing for themselves, but were hired to take something for an “employer” who controlled them. That gave me enough to write about how they got to that house, and that conversation, as well as where they went from there.
About a previous book, you said you “didn’t know how the book would end when I started it. I didn’t even know it was going to be a novel.” Was this different?
At least I knew it was going to be a novel this time around. It built from that first scene I wrote, to exploring who those characters were and what they were doing. I got stuck a couple of times and remembered that Raymond Chandler liked to cannibalize short stories he’d written for his novels, so I went back and looked at some stories of mine and found one with a young guy meeting his father’s friend in a diner, asking for a favor, which got me going again, and gave me the freedom to do some more cannibalizing.
Why this title?
I wanted it to reflect the two main characters, who consider themselves as simply thieves, and who rationalize and justify their actions, but are much more than that.
Can you discuss why the identity of what’s being stolen is secondary?
The main characters see their thievery strictly as a job—they only take things requisitioned by their boss—so they develop this elaborate process to distance themselves from what they’re actually doing. They plan and scheme as if they’re robbing Fort Knox, but they’re taking trinkets by comparison. It’s a compartmentalization and rationalization that ultimately breaks down and exposes them to continued corruption and worse, but I think this happens with most people who work—you think of ways to justify your job and try to give it meaning, or ignore the damage it’s doing, whether you work for a corrupt politician, a mom-and-pop business, or a big corporation like Amazon or Purdue Pharma. We live noirish lives, really; we like to imagine we’re doing good in the world, when we might really be making everything worse.
