Handsome Harry: A Novel - Hardcover

James Carlos Blake

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060554789 ISBN 13: 9780060554781

Publisher: William Morrow, 2004

Synopsis

They were die-hard and deadly partners who made national headlines with their daring bank holdups and gun battles -- and they had a lot of laughs while they were at it. They were known as the Dillinger Gang, but at its heart was "Handsome Harry" Pierpont -- tough, fearless, intelligent, and sworn to live by no law but his own.

Presented as his intimate "confessions," Harry's story takes us from his teenage days as a small-time crook to the pinnacle of his notoriety to his final hours in the penitentiary death house.

In prison, young Harry meets equally young John Dillinger, and they form an unassailable friendship. After John is paroled he helps Harry pull off one of the most infamous prison escapes in U.S. history. Then John is jailed and Harry must in turn liberate him; but the jailbreak comes at a tragic cost and ultimately seals Harry's fate.

In four blazing months of freedom before he meets that fate, Harry and John and their three steadfast partners -- Red, Russell, and Fat Charley -- establish themselves as the most legendary outlaw gang of the twentieth century. They rob banks. Shoot it out with police and federal agents and rival gangs. Make harrowing getaways. And all the while -- from the Midwest to Florida to Arizona, and in the company of their bold and memorable women -- they have a grand time of it.

Crafted in James Carlos Blake's signature style of fast-paced violence, sizzling sex, and darkly raucous humor, Handsome Harry brings to life a thrilling chapter from the chronicles of American crime.

About this title

About the Author:

James Carlos Blake is the author of nine novels. Among his literary honors are the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Southwest Book Award, Quarterly West Novella Prize, and Chautauqua South Book Award. He lives in Arizona.

From Publishers Weekly:

Blake's eighth novel, like his recent Under the Skin (2003), stars an antihero narrator in a world of Depression-era crime. As Harry Pierpont, the self-described leader of the bank-robbing Dillinger Gang, awaits electrocution in Ohio for the murder of a sheriff, he recalls his adventures in a narrative that reads like a good as-told-to true crime story. His teenage criminal apprenticeship prepares him for a career as an "independent fundraiser," aka a stick-up man. With his friend Earl Northern, he holds up his first bank at 21; when their second heist goes awry, Harry ends up in the state reformatory, where he first meets John Dillinger. An escape attempt lands him in the Michigan City, Ind., state pen, and there Harry learns the systematized approach to bank robbery his gang will employ years later after Dillinger helps them escape. The heady account of the ensuing four-month crime spree has the gang taking down banks, buying new cars, mooning over women and shooting policemen in the face. Harry's voice is the smooth, almost affectless vernacular of a hardened con it's convincing, but it also keep readers at a certain distance. Add that to Harry's exhibited brutality, pitilessness and fixation on sex (the book has a lot of erections and much is made of the relative size of John and Harry's members), and Blake has created a deeply flawed character, eloquent enough to tell his tale but perhaps not perceptive enough to understand its significance. Fans of true crime and gangster stories will undoubtedly enjoy this "ripped from the history books" adventure as seen through Harry's lens of tough verisimilitude.
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About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060554789
• ISBN 13: 9780060554781
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320