Crooked

July 15, 2024
Real-life gangsters Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis anchor Kalteis’s entertaining latest Depression-era crime saga (after Under an Outlaw Moon). Upon their release from prison, Fred and Alvin form the Barker-Karpis gang with Fred’s mother, Kate ”Ma” Barker, and embark on a multistate spree of audacious—and eventually, deadly—bank robberies. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI become alarmed when the public starts to view the Barker-Karpis gang and their contemporaries, John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, as folk heroes. When Fred, Alvin, and Ma raise the stakes by turning to kidnapping, Hoover places them at the top of the nation’s most-wanted list. In the months that follow, the law starts closing in on the gang, driving them to increasingly extreme means of escape. Eventually, they end up in Minnesota, carrying out violent deeds for a crooked cop in exchange for his protection. Kalteis vividly evokes the spirit of the times, and paints multidimensional portraits of his central characters. Though readers well-versed in the era’s history will know how the story ends, the action is tightly coiled enough to keep them flipping pages and rooting for the rogues. It’s another winner from Kalteis.

September 15, 2024
The old man sits in an outdoor bar in a 1970s Spanish fishing village, dazzling a couple of ""well-to-dos"" with stories from his colorful past. Dillinger's mentioned, and Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd. Right quick it comes clear that we're listening to Alvin Karpis, legendary 1930s gangster, kidnapper, bank robber, leader of the Karpis-Barker gang, topper of the FBI's Most Wanted list, and Charles Manson's guitar teacher, though that comes later. Kalteis uses the bar scene as a frame for a retelling of Karpis' crime career, written in his elliptical Elmore Leonard style that readers will find breathless or tiring or both. It's all here, the kidnapping of the high commands of the Hamm's and Schaefer breweries to his dramatic arrest by J. Edgar Hoover, who forgot the handcuffs and used an agent's necktie. What's new is a stress on Karpis' fondness for jokey conversations. As for Manson, Karpis found him talented but unwilling to do the work and dumped him.

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