Bryan Burrough meticulously pieces together recently released documents from the FBI archive to connect the criminal lives of Depression era bank robbers and kidnappers - from John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde to the lesser known Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd and Alvin Karpis.
The book describes in vivid detail, the FBI's efforts to capture these criminals. The FBI's "War on Crime" spanned the early 1930's and played an important role in shaping the Bureau into the nation's top crime fighting organization. Though J. Edgar Hoover took most of the credit for this, the author separates propaganda from real life events to show that there were other individuals within the FBI who worked tirelessly, dealt with the corruption at local law enforcement agencies and sacrificed their lives to capture the likes of Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson etc.
As far as the criminals are concerned - the author uses memoirs and witness accounts to describe their state of mind and relationships, but he makes no attempt to aggrandize their lives or their motives. At the end of the day, they were crooks who got an early start to a life of crime thanks to a depressed economy. Their stints in jail with other hardened criminals only perpetuated their cycle of violence and contempt for the law. That being said, you cannot help but feel the aura of celebrity around Dillinger, who was no less than a movie star in those days. His final capture by the FBI is one of the most gripping chapters in the book.
The book is NOT a collection of individual biographies. The author describes events in the order that they happened - so the reader has an acute sense of being right in the middle of all the action. And there's lots of it! You can just imagine Dillinger standing in a bank in his suit, fedora and with a tommy gun as he says "Stick 'em up boys, this is a hold up!", or the tires squeeling as a get-away car is mobilized at the end of a bank robbery, or the bullets flying as the police give chase, or the constant fear of capture as the criminals move from one hiding place to another.
Michael Mann's 2009 movie "Public Enemies" pales in comparison to the book. The movie is not based on facts, is slipshod, and does nothing to further our understanding of both the criminals or their captors. Melvin Purvis, who was in charge of the FBI Chicago office, and at the beginning of his career with the FBI was hand picked by J. Edgar Hoover to spearhead the "War on Crime" - was portrayed as someone who single-handedly brought down Dillinger, whereas this was far being true. Purvis, after a string of high profile and embarassing failures to capture Dillinger was demoted, and replaced by Sam Cowley who laid the foundation for Dillinger's final capture. Hollywood once again managed to take a complex story and whittle it down to 2 hours of shooting scenes between the "bad guys" and the "good guys". The only person who managed to recreate a character with authenticity was Johnny Depp - whose portayal of Dillinger was spectaculor.
