Posts

Showing posts from November, 2012

This novel steals you, SUTTON by J.R. Moehringer

This novel steals you, SUTTON by J.R. Moehringer (Hyperion) I was grabbed by  SUTTON, a novel about the famous bank robber from the Great Depression. Sutton is aspiring and resigned, flinty and sensitive, brilliant and a fool. He got under my skin with his soft noirish voice and the pathos of his thwarted life. I heard Moehringer talk about researching this novel and the odd coincidence that his mother, once a bank secretary, witnessed one of Sutton's robberies. It's the kind of coincidence Sutton details, and these telling details have more weight than bare facts in the elusive life of SUTTON . It's a fact that "Willie the Actor" was released from Attica prison on Christmas Eve 1969, after serving 17 years. (The irony that Gov.Rockefeller, a former banker, signed the order was probably not lost on Sutton). His lawyer made a deal with a newspaper for an exclusive, so he spent his first night secluded with a reporter and photographer.  SUTTON, the fictio