DIE FAMOUS

Not only is Depression-era getaway driver Eddie “Nickel” Terhune on the FBI’s Most Wanted list: His headstrong lover Savannah Cody is out to kill him—literally—for running out on her.

For Savannah, it’s a no-brainer to take Alford—her 12-year-old son by Nickel—on the road with her. Raised by his recently deceased grandmother, the boy barely knows his mother and has never met his father. A botched jewelry store robbery in Ohio that leads to a dead cop and Nickel wounded and locked up in Indiana puts a crimp in Savannah’s homicidal plan. She hatches a new scheme to save Nickel from the electric chair by marrying him—and claiming him for herself. But after he’s busted out of jail by fellow members of the Brady Gang, led by the temperamental, trigger-happy Al Brady, a John Dillinger wannabe, her feelings soften. An expert in cars, maps, and weapons who’s previously served time, Nickel isn’t a bad guy. But after Nickel flees on his own to Maine, with both Savannah and the law in pursuit, he’s joined by Brady and agrees to do a bank job with the gang. For Alford, who grew up seeing himself as “the bastard son of a criminal,” all of this is difficult to process, especially since Toland, the FBI agent on the case, seems like a character straight out of his favorite book, Dan Hyland, Police Reporter. Recurring sections from Toland’s questioning of the humorously hard-wired Savannah are entertaining but slow the pace. And Savannah’s bookish nature and designs on becoming a famous writer stretch credibility. But Koryta, a crime writer who’s thrived on genre departures, does so again in lively fashion. How can you not dig a femme fatale who digs Thoreau?

A fresh, sometimes offbeat take on the 1930s gangster novel.