Infamous - Hardcover

Atkins, Ace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399156305 ISBN 13: 9780399156304

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2010

Synopsis

From "one of the best crime writers at work today" (Michael Connelly) comes a fast, funny, violent new noir crime classic—a Coen Brothers movie come to life.

He has been compared to Lehane, Ellroy, and Pelecanos, but Ace Atkins's rich, raucous, passionate blend of historical novel and crime story is all his own and never more so than in Infamous.

In July 1933, the gangster known as George "Machine Gun" Kelly staged the kidnapping-for-ransom of an Oklahoma oil­man. He would live to regret it. Kelly was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, and what started clean soon became messy, as two of his partners cut themselves into the action; a determined former Texas Ranger makes tracking Kelly his mission; and Kelly's wife, ever alert to her own self-interest, starts playing both ends against the middle.

The result is a mesmerizing tale set in the first days of the modern FBI, featuring one of the best femmes fatales in history—the Lady Macbeth of Depression-era crime—a great unexpected hero, and some of the most colorful supporting characters in recent crime fiction.

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About this title

About the Author

Ace Atkins is the author of White Shadow, Wicked City, Devil's Garden, and four Nick Travers novels. He lives on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi.

Reviews

Set in 1933, Atkins's winning fourth history-based novel focuses on two figures who, as the author explains in an introduction, have been undeservedly lost in the shuffle of Depression-era gangsters: George Kelly, who ironically gets saddled with the nickname Machine Gun, and his wife, Kathryn. The fast-moving narrative spans a three-month period, starting with a fatal ambush in a parking lot outside Kansas City's Union Station in which hoods gun down several lawmen and the prisoner they were about to drive to Leavenworth. This massacre leads to the FBI obtaining the authority to make arrests and carry weapons. The bulk of the action concerns the Kellys' kidnapping of Charles Urschel, a wealthy Oklahoma oilman, and its aftermath. Atkins (Devil's Garden) brings to vivid life the henpecked George and the bloodthirsty Kathryn as he convincingly conjures up a past era. Not just for crime fans, this should appeal to a wide readership. (Apr.)
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With the 1933 kidnapping of Oklahoma oil baron Charles Urschel, small-time bank robber George Kelly became “Machine Gun” Kelly. Atkins’ latest historical novel based on a real crime (following Devil’s Garden, 2009, about the Fatty Arbuckle scandal) makes it clear that Kelly’s wife, Kathryn, was the driving force behind his ascendance. George is shown to be an affable mug, a feckless dandy more interested in two-toned shoes and 16-cylinder Cadillacs than crime and machine guns, a crook who was dismissed as a lightweight by other gangsters. Kathryn, however, is a force of nature, a preening, determined-not-to-be-poor-again shopaholic, a celebrity-obsessed Lady Macbeth. But it’s Atkins’ prodigious research that makes this novel a compelling road trip through Depression-era America. He vividly portrays the Dust Bowl, foreclosures, the grinding poverty, gnawing hunger, desperation, and the rage at bankers (most of which resonate in today’s America); and he captures the imminent end of the gangsters’ heyday. Like many fine historical crime novels, Infamous offers a window on society, then and now. --Thomas Gaughan

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399156305
• ISBN 13: 9780399156304
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416