Thieves' Nights

by Harry Stephen Keeler

Little did Ward Sharlow know that when he agreed to impersonate Calvin Atwood for a month, that he would be flirting with prison and scandal. When the man who hired him suddenly dies, Ward has to decide when and where to come forward with the truth. But before he can speak, the shaggy-dog stories and flashbacks about the Raffles-like Delancey start flying fast and loose, and even the most rabid reader of Harry Keeler’s webwork mysteries will ask himself what the hell is going on!

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Born in Chicago in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929):

"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."

Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.

Reviews

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

De nuevo vuelvo al portentoso Harry Stephen Keeler, en una de sus descabelladas historias, plagadas de casualidades y de intrincado argumento. ‘Noches de ladrones’ (Thieves’ Nights, 1929) da comienza cuando Ward Sharlow responde al extraño anuncio del rico John Atwood, en el que se le requiere para hacerse pasar por su hijo Calvin Atwood. Al mismo tiempo, sabemos de la carta del padre de Sharlow, que este guarda desde hace tiempo, para ser abierta el día de su 27 cumpleaños, ya cercano. A partir de aquí todo se sucede sin freno.

Keeler sigue en ‘Noches de ladrones’ el patrón de historias dentro de historias dentro historias, remitiéndonos estas a Delancey, el Rey de los Ladrones. El dominio de Keeler es extraordinario a la hora de integrar estas sub tramas dentro del argumento principal. Este juego de historias anidadas es típico en la obra de Keeler. Gran novela del genial HSK.

[AJ McGuire · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a blast. Wow. Half way through the book the guy sits down to read a manuscript. The manuscript tells a story that is interrupted half way through by someone else launching into a detailed story and so on and so on. Eventually you lose track of where you are and what is going on. But the surprise ending brings everyone together from every loose-end and through sequential dramatic reveals (one after the next) three separate impostors all discover they are long long triplets. Sentences are filled with needlessly big words and extra adjectives like: ""Its me!" He ejaculated ungrammatically, pencil in hand!" And the plot twists are so fast and furious they effectively make a mockery of the idea of plots. And yet it all stays so completely entertaining. I made a note to read another Keeler next time I'm on vacation.

[KHLOARIS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love-struck cousins… a fraudulent son… a fatal heart-attack. Blink twice & twins become triplets, eyeballs are removed for storing smuggled gemstones and a swimming goldfish stands guard over a trap-door contraption designed to protect the shameful secrets of swindled inventor. Just when this parade of random dime-novel tropes becomes hopelessly incoherent, the crystal shards magically align. It happens after the halfway mark, when its discovered that the culprit has published an actual dime-novel of their own confessing their entire criminal career by way of a series of hallucinatory puns and awful dad jokes. The only one who can deconstruct its meaning is Montana trail guide named George Little-White-Bear, who also happens to be a Doctor of Philosophy in the field of psychology. Like all of his books, Keeler makes no qualms about plonking bits of sloppy racism into the middle of his stories. There’s a not-so-subtle plot twist involving a blackface disguise. Before this book’s finale the entire plot gets wrapped around that very uncomfortable museum debate that’s still going on today: the repatriation of stolen colonial relics. Keeler goes off on a long tangent emphasizing the systemic racism of the courts and how it forces certain victims of theft, specifically non-whites, into accepting black market arrangements.