Handsome Harry
A Novel
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4.6 • 8 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
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. 6-city author tour.
