About this item
Highlights
- The renowned author pens his most commercial novel to date--a thrilling retelling of the John Dillinger story told by one of his most colorful and loyal cohorts. . . . "One of the best and most original writers today.
- Author(s): James Carlos Blake
- 320 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Historical
Description
Book Synopsis
The renowned author pens his most commercial novel to date--a thrilling retelling of the John Dillinger story told by one of his most colorful and loyal cohorts. . . . "One of the best and most original writers today."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
They were 10 daring and deadly men who transfixed a nation with their penchant for crime, bad women, good times, and lots of laughs. They were the Dillinger Gang. And at its heart was "Handsome Harry" Pierpont, an incredibly tough yet well-spoken natural leader who would eventually die in the electric chair.
From humble beginnings as a car thief and smalltime stick-up man, Harry worked his way up to bank robber--a career move that landed him in prison and introduced him to John Dillinger. When Dillinger was paroled, he provided the pistols Harry and nine other convicts used in one of the most renowned prison breaks in American history. Discovering his true blue pal had been captured, the ever-loyal Harry then broke Dilligner out, killing a high sheriff and sealing his fate.
Yet in the four months before they were finally apprehended, the Dillinger Gang lived uproariously, robbing banks rom Chicago to Tuscon. An exciting, animated story chock full of violence, sex, and humor, Handsome Harry brings to life a dangerous and exciting time and the outlaws who made it legend.
From the Back Cover
Harry Pierpont and John Dillinger were die-hard and deadly partners who made national headlines with their daring bank hold-ups 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 his fateful meeting with the equally young Dillinger to the pinnacle of his notoriety, and to his final hours in the penitentiary death house.
Crafted in James Carlos Blake's signature style of fast-paced violence, sizzling sex, and darkly raucous humor, Handsome Harry re-creates a thrilling chapter from the chronicles of American crime.
Review Quotes
"One of the best, and most original writers in America today." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Classic Blake, mixing violence with passion, the hardnose with the sensitive...No one out there does this better." -- Denver Post
"'Handsome Harry' is not a departure for the seductively violent Blake but a refinement. It still carries his trademark - carnage, sex and dry humor - but it is also a beguiling, hurtling digression into a new voice for Blake. It's not just firstperson point-of-view, but it's crawling inside a character who really lived and rebuilding him from the inside out without disturbing the patina of legend that colors him." -- Denver Post
"James Carlos Blake has established himself as one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life... his fiction is so readable--so folksy, action-packed, and earthy, --it's easy to miss the fact that it is also, frequently, brilliant." -- Entertainment Weekly