J.R. Moehringer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000, is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Author of the bestselling memoir, The Tender Bar, he is also the co-author of Open by Andre Agassi.
`A terrific first novel by turns suspenseful, funny, romantic, and
sad—in short, a book you won’t be able to put down’
John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road `Astonishing
detail … an unerring sense of place and history … a fascinating
portrait of a criminal’ People magazine `With a voice at once
sentimental and muscular, Moehringer is like John Irving or Roddy
Doyle … at its core the novel is a love letter to New York’
Entertainment Weekly `What Hilary Mantel did for Thomas Cromwell,
J.R. Moehringer now does for Willie Sutton’ Newsday
Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize winner for feature writing in 2000, brings infamous bank robber Willie "The Actor" Sutton to life in his inventive debut novel (after the memoir The Tender Bar). True to history, the ailing 68-year-old Sutton was released from prison on Christmas Eve 1969 and spent the following day with a reporter. Though the journalist's actual take on that day revealed little, Moehringer uses the excursion as an entree into Sutton's dramatic life. The ex-con revisits old haunts, recalls successful and failed heists, and reminisces about the woman he sought always to impress. Alternating between Christmas Day and Sutton's earlier years, Moehringer stays in the present tense, making the action immediate, but the shifts in time easy to miss. Nevertheless, he paints a mesmerizing portrait of a remarkable man: a talented thief, an aspiring novelist, and a student of the classics ("Dante, Plato, Shakespeare, Freud") even in prison, where he spent half his life. The author's eye for detail and sense of place make every stop on Sutton's internal and external journeys resonate-from smoking a Chesterfield to Sutton's first sight of the moon as a free man, every scene is saturated with life. Agent: Mort Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Moehringer offers a fictionalized biography of gentleman bank robber and accomplished prison escape artist Willie Sutton, one of the most famous criminals of the early 20th century. The author appreciates the contradictions and conflicts in the contemporary accounts of Sutton as well as in the subject's own autobiographies. With a mix of fact and imagination, the listener is drawn into Willie's life of love and passion, hard time served, and hard choices. The literary device of a lifetime recalled in a day flows well, as does the husky narration by Dylan Baker, who infuses the presentation with just the right level of Brooklyn accent. VERDICT For crime, biography, and historical fiction fans. ["History lovers will enjoy this fictional biography of a modern icon of crime," read the review of the Hyperion hc, LJ 8/12.-Ed.]-J. Sara Paulk, Wythe-Grayson Reg. Lib., -Independence, VA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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