John Dillinger: The Life and Death of America's First Celebrity Criminal [Hardcover]

Dary Matera (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 2004

Best-selling author Dary Matera sets the Dillinger record straight, seventy years after the outlaw’s death. John Dillinger is an adrenaline-fueled narrative that reignites America’s fascination with the suave but deadly desperado who was the FBI’s first “Public Enemy.” Dubbed “The Jackrabbit” because of the way he leaped over bank cages and railings, Dillinger and his bank-robbing gang cut a criminal swath yet to be equaled. They became so famous in the 1930s that throngs of excited spectators would block the route to their getaway cars. When caught, Dillinger staged the most harrowing prison escapes imaginable—only to finally be betrayed by the infamous “Lady in Red.” John Dillinger brings to light new information, including bank robberies never before reported; detailed plans for major crimes that Dillinger nearly implemented; the revelation that the “Lady in Red” was actually a police plant; and the startling fact that John Dillinger was summarily executed by rogue FBI agents being manipulated by East Chicago detectives desperate to cover up widespread police corruption. With access to thousands of detailed accounts, and pages of telling photographs, Matera’s definitive book describes every robbery, shoot-out, and prison escape as though he choreographed them himself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this overly detailed biography, true-crime veteran Matera (The FBI's Ten Most Wanted, etc.) painstakingly recounts every bullet fired by the legendary robber John Dillinger, his criminal cohorts and his law-enforcement adversaries. Starting with a car theft at the age of 20, the gangster-obsessed Dillinger rapidly descended into a busy career as a bank robber, working with such pros as Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd. In the 1930s, Americans avidly followed Dillinger's crime spree and spectacular escapes from custody. Some portrayed him as a Robin Hood, while others cynically suspected that he often worked in cahoots with the very financial institutions he victimized. The book's most sensational claim is that the famous theater-alley gunfight in which Dillinger died was actually an official hit intended to cover up police corruption. The rather rigid straightforward storytelling obscures Dillinger's personality, and the countless heists and running gun battles tend to merge into one another. The epilogue, however, puts the criminal's significance in context by demonstrating his role in the creation of the FBI and new police tactics for dealing with armed robbers. Students of crime as well as those interested in the public fascination with larger-than-life figures on the other side of the law will find this useful. FYI: After eight years in prison, Dillinger was paroled on May 22, 1933, a date that marks the start of the most storied crime spree in U.S. history.
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From Booklist

In this exciting, enjoyable, but rather curious book, Matera intends to debunk many of the myths surrounding Dillinger, but he seems just as determined to romanticize him while demonizing some of his pursuers. One of Matera's premises is, actually, wrong; Dillinger was certainly not our first celebrity criminal (does the name Jesse James ring a bell?). Still, as Matera recounts Dillinger's slow but steady progress from inept punk to daring bank robber, his narrative easily draws in the reader. There are bold robberies, unlikely escapes, and near misses--and, of course, the familiar selection of gun molls. Dillinger and other gang members are treated somewhat sympathetically, but some lawmen are tagged as "assassins," "hit men," or "terminators." There are lots of interesting tidbits here, and the blow-by-blow descriptions of the battles between Dillinger's gangs and lawmen are engrossing. Although obviously far from a work of scholarship, it is a fun slice of Americana. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1St Edition edition (March 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786713542
• ISBN-13: 978-0786713547
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,517,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's been done better before, March 29, 2005

By 

George Klos (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Dillinger: The Life and Death of America's First Celebrity Criminal (Hardcover)

While a good, if annoying read (see details below) that narrates the Dillinger story capably, Matera's book is plagued with problems, from it's main thesis to word usage errors. His conclusions are half-right at best -- police were already stocking machine guns and body armor (Dillinger robbed them, remember?), banks were already beefing up security, and SWAT teams were not created until decades later. Dillinger can only be considered "America's first clebrity criminal" by people who have never heard of Jesse James or Al Capone. While he was the most famous outlaw of the era, it was the presence of so many gangs (and the attendant press coverage) that did more for changes in law enforcement and new federal laws covering what had previously been local offenses.

On to real errors. On p. 128 Dillinger meets with a police snitch at 222 State St. (The Loop), then went around the corner to a bar on Lawrence Ave., which is actually 50-plus blocks north of the 200 block of State! Dillinger was not taken by cops on "commercial jets," as they did not exist in 1934. John's niece Mary is described (p. 126) as a student at Bulter U. and later as "an aspiring beauty school grad" (p. 250); Butler is a beauty school?

Finally usage errors here are maddening. John and Pierpont were "trapped by providential thinking." Huh? It's PROVINCIAL! Here's another doozy: "Anna's underhanded activities were particularly cold-blooded in light of her behavior in the proceeding months. It's supposed to be "proceeding" as in coming before July 1934, not "proceeding" (continuing), as John was no longer alive in the proceeding months. And the hot temperature was not the feds' "alley," it was their ally. OK, one more (p. 132): "The police was..." Who let that through?

Too picky? No. Matera should have given his manuscript a cleaner line-by-line scrub before sending it in, and there is no excuse for such sloppy editing from a professional publishing house.

His breezy writing style may work for some readers, but I find his use of modern slang ill-fitting in a story set in the 1930s. In sum Girardin and Hellmer's "Dillinger" and Burrough's "Public Enemies" are much better books on the subject.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Rip Roaring Read, March 25, 2007

By 

Michael C. Tighe "Bookbinger" (Glide, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Dillinger: The Life and Death of America's First Celebrity Criminal (Hardcover)

"John Dillinger" by Dary Matera proved to be the page-turner I hoped it would be when I purchased it purely on impulse.

Matera gives brief attention to the early life of America's favorite Depression-era desperado, noting the death of his mother when Johnny was a three-year-old and his early forays into small-time crime. Sentenced to a "whopping ten-to-twenty" in the penitentiary for his youthful crimes in 1924, Dillinger spent nine years in the pen before being granted clemency by Indiania Governor Paul V. McNutt in May 1933.

In the fourteen remaining months of his life, Dillinger engaged in a crime spree, robbing banks, raiding police stations for weapons, and staging jail breaks to become America's most colorful prince of thieves and Public Enemy Number One. The narrative is swept along with one shoot-out and getaway after another, and the cast of characters includes all the gangsters I was fascinated with as a boy -- Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Homer Van Meter, Alvin Karpis, and a dozen others in Dillinger's changing gang of thugs.

The gun molls play their part and the often-bumbling lawmen, with J. Edgar Hoover at the head of the newly-formed FBI. There was a tender side to Dillinger, shown to his family and girlfriends, his generosity with the needy, and a fierce sense of loyalty to his gang members, for whom he would risk his life to insure their freedom.

Demonstrably well researched, the book has few flaws other than an occasional factual slip-up and a few niggling errors of syntax that annoyed me. But it is definitely a rip roaring read!

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What About Jesse James?, March 26, 2005

By 

Rick "Mad Dog" Mattix (Iowa) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: John Dillinger: The Life and Death of America's First Celebrity Criminal (Hardcover)

This book is definitely worth checking out. After reading it I'm not as impressed as I was at first glance but it's pretty good. There is a great amount of new information here, including some bank jobs heretofore unreported in earlier Dillinger books, and some previously unpublished photos. The research was done mainly by the late Joe Pinkston and his collaborator Tom Smusyn, both wonderful guys and both well known in historical crime circles as the ultimate authorities on America's first Public Enemy Number One, and the book is a rewritten condensation of a 1,000-plus page manuscript completed by Pinkston shortly before his death. I'm glad the book was put out as least a tribute to Joe Pinkston's work but don't especially care for Matera's hipster writing style--this is the first I've ever heard of Dillinger being popularly called "The Jackrabbit"--and a number of factual errors creep into the narrative as well, errors that Pinkston and Smusyn would never have made. I have serious doubts that Matera ever left Arizona while writing this book. Greencastle, Illinois? If Matera can prove Doc Moran's body was pulled off a Canadian lake shore in 1935 I'll eat my hat. The FBI sure didn't know about this even years later and I doubt that it comes from Joe Pinkston either. And the subtitle: "America's First Celebrity Criminal"--has Matera never heard of Al Capone? Or Jesse James? Don't get me wrong. This is a good book and belongs in the library of any Dillingerphile, if only for the impeccable research of Pinkston and Smusyn. But it's not the definitive account it could have been--or should have been.