Summer fluff historical fiction about bank robber Willie Sutton, finally out of prison for the last time, taking 2 newspaper men on a journey through his past haunts and his memories. It's a great yarn and fun.

For most readers, there are a handful of writers who could write treatises on advanced paint-drying or introductory grass-growing or intermediate shirt-wearing, and you'd still be riveted. For me, J.R. Moehringer is one of those writers. I've loved his journalism, his memoir, and his not-so-secretly ghost written autobiography for Andre Agassi.

Sutton, about real-life bank robber extraordinaire Willie "The Actor" Sutton, who stole more than $2 million over a 30-year career, is his Moehringer's first novel. And it's just as fun to read as the rest of his stuff.

The story begins with Sutton's release from jail on Christmas Eve, 1969. Sutton agrees to tell his life story to a young journalist, and lays out a plan to visit all the important New York sites of his life over the course of one day. So we flash between the story of Sutton traveling around New York with the journalist and a photographer, and these actual important events — his poor childhood in Brooklyn, falling in love with a girl name Bess, the hopelessness during the early 1920s that led him to rob his first banks, and a series of arrests and jailbreaks.

Beyond just the straight smash-and-grab fun of this story, there are two other notable aspects. First, Willie Sutton is a sentimental cat, constantly reminiscing about places and people. And so that leads into par of the point of the novel: Asking readers to question how much we can trust his memory of events, and, by extension, how much we can trust events as they're laid down on the page by Moehringer. That's not to say Moehringer sets out to tell the story unreliably— it just means that the delineation of myth and memory is often not a solid line.

As well, after Sutton is put in jail for the last time in 1952, he briefly becomes kind of a folk hero in New York. (When asked why he robbed banks, he supposedly unleashed the famous line: "Because that's where the money is.") He spent his life "exacting revenge" on the evil, unethical banks that caused a vicious cycle of economic collapse and recovery. There's certainly a nod towards modern times in the way Moehringer portrays the banks and the catastrophe they create for the "common" folk.

Finally, if Moehringer's goal is to make a criminal likeable, he certainly succeeds — and not the least because Sutton is a bookworm. It's maybe a pander to readers, but I still really dug this detail. In his first stay in jail, he meets a former newspaper editor named Chapin who explains to him the value of books. I absolute love these lines:

Sutton: "I love to read sir. I always have. But when I walk into a library or bookshop, I get overwhelmed. I don't know where to start.
Chapin: "Start anywhere."
Sutton: "How do I know what's worth my time and what's a waste?"
Chapin: "None of it is a waste. Any book is better than no book. Slowly, surely, one will lead you to another, which will lead you to the best. Do you want to spend your life planting roses with me?"
Sutton: "No sir."
Chapin: "Then—books. It's that simple. A book is the only escape from this fallen world. Aside from death."

There's a bit of trick at the end of this novel — harkening back to the myth vs. memory theme —and it's my least favorite part of this story. But overall, if you're looking for an immensely well-written, fun-to-read fictional biographical novel, Sutton is just the thing.

Willie Sutton is an interesting character. In some ways, the once-famous bank robber is a victim of the times in which he became a man, when banks were failing every few years and jobs were scarce, then plentiful, then scarce again. But unlike most men of the time, Willie turned to crime. That he was never violent toward any of his victims, and never ratted on any of his accomplices, makes him slightly more respectable but Moehringer doesn't sugarcoat the fact that he was indeed a thief. Willie not only excelled at the art of robbery but at the art of escape. Unfortunately, staying free was not his strong suit and he was captured again and again, which makes his story somewhat repetitive and frustrating. Insight into Irish neighborhoods, the prison system at the time, journalism,and the theory that Willie may have done it all for misplaced love of a girl make it a satisfying, if somewhat overlong, read.

Just when you think you know Willie, you're thrown upside down. Captivating, and requires a second reading, even if it's more about the ability to mythologize one's life than it is about facts.

Interesting and instantly accessible story of real-life bank robber and prison escapee Willie Sutton. For fans of historical fiction, especially early 20th-century NYC, it's a quick and compelling read (unless you're a stickler for punctuation around dialogue, then this may not be for you). Parallels to the banking crisis of 2008 abound. Recommended.

300 pages for that? What a lot of overwritten nothing. Somebody did a lot of research and found nothing interesting in it to hang a story on so wrote one anyway.

Sutton was a joy to read. The story telling devise was very interesting. Sutton is telling his life story to a reporter while visting significant locations from his life, then we also get more indepth stories that the reporter does not get.

The content of several scenes are difficult to read (Sutton received several severe beatings in his life), but otherwise, the progression of the story flows, and the love story drives the book forward.

The one problem I had with the book was the conclusion. It was very difficult to understand, and ultimately made the whole story unreliable. The denouement gives some explaination for the confusing conclusion, and while I understad how it all fits together, it was still disappointing, and an unfortunate way to end an otherwise wonderful book.

I loved it! Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit that I didn't know anything about WIllie Sutton but I really didn't. He is an endearing man in this version of his life story. I liked the angle of the story - how it travelled from the past to the "present" (not really the present but present enough). I like the descriptiveness of the book. It was easy to follow and imagine. There was even a touch of suspense.
So why didn't I rate it 5 stars?,
Because the writing didn't stay with me the way other books have - Richard Yates, Michael Cunningham, etc.
It was a pretty book- but it wasn't beautiful.

A great read and a good way to while the hours. But it was no literary masterpiece - at least not to me.

I enjoyed this immensely. The narrative structure was well developed and the characters engaging. The story was very readable and I liked the interesting twists the author provided.

Remember how I fussed and fumed over [b:The Movement of Stars|15815363|The Movement of Stars|Amy Brill|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1350922610s/15815363.jpg|21541859] and how a completely fictional romance was shoehorned into a real person's life, presumably to make it more interesting? And how I complained that whenever the protagonist is a woman, it seems like there has to be a grand romantic sub-plot, but when the protagonists are men, it doesn't?

I take it back. I lied. Here is a book, about a man, written by a man, that does the EXACT SAME THING.

J.R. Moehringer got the idea for the novel while wanting to write a non-fiction book about how evil modern banks are. But he went this route instead. Willie Sutton was a "gentleman bankrobber" whose career spanned the 20s through the 50s, included 3 jailbreaks, and caused him to be somewhat of a folk hero. Overall, a good subject for a novel. And I saw an interview with the author where he talked about the importance of following history, just filling in the gaps, that he thinks this is what historical fiction readers want to experience. He said this is what he did -- no CHANGING history, just following it and adding his own imagination where no evidence exists.

...Woe, WOE to authors who make those promises and then don't follow through! A good historical fiction will make me look up the subject, and then I will KNOW what you did and did not do!

So as I said at the beginning, this book takes (and runs with) the idea that a girl Willie met early on -- Bess Endner -- is the grand love of his life and that his whole life of crime somehow revolves around her and his love for her. (This is not a spoiler, it becomes evident very early in the book.)

Almost unmentioned go his two real life wives and his real life daughter...less than a paragraph is devoted in total to the three of them. Moehringer's determination to give Willie Sutton an Anakin Skywalkeresque "I did it all for love" character arc means it's all Bess Bess Bess, all the time. Never mind that in my opinion, it would have been way more interesting to see a career criminal's interactions with his REAL wives, his REAL daughter, as opposed to some fakey relationship (fakey in that there's no historical evidence that Moehringer's hypothesis is true, and fakey in that even in the novelverse the romance barely passes the 1/4 of the way mark before it's all just remembrances). Because we're so focused on that, we see very little of Willie's life -- we don't even get a good walkthrough of any of his famous bank heists!! Usually I complain of too little going on in characters' heads, but this is the opposite--we spend so much time in Willie's head we don't get to see his life.

Also, whatever you do,

Spoiler

don't get interested enough in Bess Endner that you google her and find a PDF of a contemporaneous NYT article that gives away the ENTIRE FREAKING ENDING. The whole, ludicrous, "WTF this is on a par with chimpanzee Lincoln from Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes" ending.

Maybe I'm just not a romantic, but I don't understand this trope in literature, TV, and movies. I find it trite, dull, and not terribly realistic. And when it's laid over an actual historical figure who seems way more complex than this, it bothers me doubly.

It's probably a book still worth reading, but I don't know that it's a book worth buying -- pick it up at the library.

That said, the cover is sexy as hell. Look at that! Yowza.