Heists
Last week's heist at Graff jewellers was pretty awesome, right? Broad daylight, no (obvious) masks--just two guys and one big bag of booty. An example of pure balls, and excellent planning. Not just the stuff of Hollywood or history--how delightful it is to know that there are still folks today who can pull off a good old fashioned robbery. I appreciate that my admiration is a little misplaced, but I am still secretly grateful that--at least for now--I can imagine them inhaling Pina Coladas under a palm tree and looking pretty chipper. The perfect ending to the perfect crime. And in true life, to boot.
Heists, be they real or imaginary, are the fodder for a gripping tale. They've got gall, brains, greed, tense relationships, and the ever-alluring possibility of innumerable riches. No wonder then that there is a plethora of books on the subject. The works of fiction have pace a-plenty, and the histories or autobiographies are fascinating for their explanations of such calculated audacity. Read any of the following books this summer and there's no doubt they will have you on the edge of your sun lounger.
Eugenie Teasley
1. Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein
Attila Ambrus, Hungary’s most wanted criminal, is the subject of this wildly-titled book. A man of many trades, Ambrus was a near-hero in the face of the massive government corruption that accompanied Hungary's transition to capitalism. It is Rubinstein’s interest in, and sympathy toward, csorikaim, the little people, that is striking. The interspersion of country-wide politics helps contextualise Ambrus’ escapades, and the book ends up being at the intersection of grounded history and pure absurdity. It is a criminal romp of a read.
2. Hombre by Elmore Leonard
Leonard is legendary. Gritty, realistic, with a stream of dialogue, he tends to forego strict grammar rules and just gets on with writing a damn good book. He once advised budding writers to "try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." It’s a tough choice to pick just one of his books, so I’ll keep it simple and go for an early classic. In Hombre, John Russell has been raised as an Apache. Now he's on his way to live as a white man. But when the stagecoach passengers learn who he is, they want nothing to do with him -- until outlaws ride down on them and they must rely on Russell's guns and his ability to lead them out of the desert. He can't ride with them, but they must walk with him or die.
3. The Autobiography of a Thief by Bruce Reynolds
8 August 1963; a railway track in Buckinghamshire. The moon shines clearly over Bruce Reynolds and sixteen other men robbing a train of its sacks of money. The Great Train Robbery has entered British folklore as one of the most audacious and extraordinary crimes of the twentieth century. The haul £2,631,684 - is, in today’s money, a staggering £26 million. Bruce Reynolds, the leader of the gang, was sentenced to 25 years in prison; even the Commissioner of the Met, Sir Robert Mark, thought that excessive. On its first publication in 1995 Bruce Reynolds autobiography was widely acclaimed and it is now regarded as a classic in the true crime genre. Now reissued with a new introduction and final chapter, the story is brought up to date to include the return of Ronnie Biggs to the UK, the deaths of Buster Edwards, Roy James and Taters Chatham and the continuing story of Reynolds life since his release from jail, as well as dozens of previously unseen photographs.
4. Loophole: Or How to Rob a Bank by Robert Pollock
If you’re going to write about a heist, and you are not a criminal, the best review, presumably, would be from a real-deal robber. So Pollock must have been happy to have had Alfred Nussbaum—once one of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Men—critique Loophole in the Chicago Sun Times. “Bank-robbing novel drips with authenticity. Fans of the big caper novel are in for a real treat. Verisimilitude, the illusion of a carefully created reality, he has seldom been stronger. If author Robert Pollock is not on parole, he should certainly be under surveillance. He has an exceptionally crafty mind.” At the time he wrote this review Nussbaum was serving a 40 year sentence for multiple bank robberies.
5. King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked New York City by J. North Conway
This is a spellbinding and unprecedented account of the greatest bank robbery in American history, which took place on October 27, 1878, when thieves broke into the Manhattan Savings Institution and stole nearly $3 million in cash and securities--around $50 million in today's terms. Bringing the notorious Gilded Age to life in a thrilling narrative, J. North Conway tells the story of those who plotted and carried out this infamous robbery, how they did it, and how they were tracked down and captured. The robbery was planned to the minutest detail by criminal mastermind George Leonidas Leslie--a society architect and ladies' man whose double life as the nation's most prolific bank robber led him to be dubbed the "King of the Bank Robbers." The New York Times proclaimed the 1878 heist "the most sensational in the history of bank robberies in this country."
6. Dangerous Lady by Martina Cole
Martina Cole is the best-selling author in Britain. Dangerous Lady was her first novel, and set the stage for her subsequent explosive page-turners. Meet the dodgy Ryan family. Michael, the eldest, has ambitions way beyond petty crime. At first, his little sister Maura, turns a blind eye to her beloved brother's misdeeds. Then Maura decides to join the family 'firm'. No one thinks a seventeen-year-old girl can take on the hard men of London’s gangland, but it’s a mistake to underestimate Maura Ryan: she’s tough, clever and beautiful - which makes her one very dangerous lady. For pure unadulterated thrills, and a litany of expletives, read on.
7. Where the Money is: True Tales From the Bank Robbery Capital of the World by W J Rehder
Bank robbers have always fascinated Americans: Jesse James, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde. FBI Special Agent William J. Rehder, the man CBS News once described as "America's secret weapon against bank robbers", chronicles the lives and crimes of bank robbers in today's Los Angeles who are as colourful and exciting as the legends of long ago. The mild-mannered antiques dealer who robbed more banks than anyone else in history; the modern Fagin who took a page out of Dickens and had children rob banks for him; the misfit bodybuilders who used a movie as a blue-print for a spree of violent robberies: this title explores these stories and more, all within a pistol shot of Hollywood, but as vivid as anything on the big screen.
8. Kahawa by Donald E Westlake
This 1981 Westlake gem is back in print. A mile-long freight train steams through the heart of Idi Amin's mad, tortured, magical, and corrupt Uganda, loaded down with kahawa (Swahili for coffee). What Amin doesn't know, what his most beautiful spy has not been able to wring out of her latest victim, and what the world's coffee markets may be unable to swallow, is that the train and six million dollars worth of coffee are about to disappear into the hands of a conflicted, colorful, swashbuckling band of mercenaries and moneymakers.
9. Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery by Jason Burhmester
Heists go rock’n’roll. In July 1973, Led Zeppelin played three sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Before the final performance, $203,000 of the band’s money went missing from a safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel in what was called the single highest deposit box theft in the city’s history. The money was never recovered. Black Dogs might be the story behind the greatest rock ’n’ roll heist of all time. Black Dogs brings to life one of the infamously unsolved rock ’n’ roll mysteries and introduces us to a lovable bunch of knuckleheads who may have just pulled off the greatest heist in rock ’n’ roll history.
10. 11 Harrowhouse by Gerald A Browne
Simply because the paperback cover is so absurd, this book features in the top ten as an 80s heist classic. A small time diamond merchant jumps at the chance to supervise the purchase and cutting of a large first class diamond. But when the diamond is stolen from him, he is blackmailed into pulling off a major heist at the Diamond Exchange, located at 11 Harrowhouse.
Monday, 17 August, 2009
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