Thieves Like Us

by Edward Anderson and Edward Anderson

Book Overview

When three small-time country gangsters break jail, they return to the only life they know-small-town bank robbing. When Bowie, the youngest of them, falls in love wit Keechie, one of the older... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806125039
• ISBN13: 9780806125039
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 314 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Thieves like no other else

The line "They are thieves like us" appears a couple of times in Edward Anderson's eponymous novel. It is said by a thief when talking to his partners-in-crime to justify their action, and he refers to bankers and politicians. By this, we can assume this character, named Bowie, is a direct heir to Robin Hood, although not all the money his gang can get goes to poor people, but they are careful enough not to get money from those who have only little. Anderson never fails to look with tenderness to his characters and give them the dignity they deserve. They live in hard times and almost any act is justifiable. It is difficult not to take side with Bowie and his friends, Chicamaw and T-Dub, as their story progresses. "Thieves like us" is one of the earliest American noir novels, but it is not the hardboiled kind. This is a more sentimental and sad one, in which feelings and emotions replace gunshots and investigations. It is more about what is happening inside the mind and hearts of its characters. Anderson perception of these people is what makes the novel remarkable. This is a reading that takes us to past, but still resonates with the present.

"I get a kick out of robbing banks."

During 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were gunned down, John Dillinger was trapped in a movie theater and shot to death, and Roy Johnson was serving a life sentence for armed robbery. While in prison, Johnson witnessed and played a small role in two bloody escape attempts masterminded by the notorious and murderous pretty-boy Charlie Frazier, with the help of (among others) an easily bribed guard and Roy Thornton--Bonnie Parker's estranged husband. Johnson lived to survive the year and was subsequently interviewed by his cousin Edward Anderson while the latter was researching his second novel, "Thieves Like Us," published three years later. You can see all these semi-biographical strands come together in this novel: the escape from prison, the subsequent bank robberies, sawed-off shotguns and police shootouts, corrupt officials, the doomed pair of criminal lovers. At the center of a trio of escaped convicts is 27-year-old Bowie, a lifer with a "good prison record" whose off-kilter honor code compels him to treat his victims "courteously"--as long as things go right. They read about their own exploits in the newspaper, noting with satisfaction that they are portrayed as one part "bold" hero, three parts thug ("we're hotter than gun barrels"). But then, the group dynamic changes with the introduction of the well-meaning, relatively innocent Keechie, who tends Bowie's wounds after a car accident (and subsequent shootout with the police) and who becomes tempted by Bowie's dream of hiding "out in the hills" in a cabin "just live to ourselves and pretty soon people would forget all about Bowie Bowers and then finally there would just be the real Bowie Bowers." But who really is "the real Bowie Bowers"? "Extremes in riches make extremes in crime," remarks a sympathetic if magniloquent lawyer who is willing to aid the trio in trouble and who inveighs against the "money interests," their "bediamonded wives," and the lack of "moral justice." Bowie, however, attributes his actions to motives far less lofty: "I get a kick out of robbing banks. I don't mind admittin' it." The money, while never enough, sometimes seems beside the point. It's this dissonance--the contrasting tugs of the magnetism of respectability, the thrill of his misdeeds, the allure of wealth, and a misguided loyalty to his outlaw friends--that will result in Bowie's undoing. The loss of Keechie's virtue and trust and safety is little more than collateral damage in this power play. Dominated by the bleakness of Depression-era America, Anderson's quasi-proletarian novel depicts fugitives who not only find a life of crime hopelessly tempting but also feel they can't do anything else.

No way out.

Thieves Like Us is a thoroughly downbeat, noirish tale about a trio of career criminals who escape from an Oklahoma prison and proceed to commit a series of bank robberies. The one nicknamed Bowie finds love with a poor country girl. As the two lovers set up housekeeping despite the ever present threat of discovery hanging over their heads, the reader is acutely aware that the phrase "happily ever after" is not likely to play much of a role here. The plot of this dark Depression era work takes a relentlessly downward spiral as the characters inevitably become trapped in a spider web of their own making. Author Edward Anderson did a great job in bringing to life the rural small town settings against which the majority of the narrative takes place. Especially noteworthy is the plentiful dialogue featuring a distinctive vernacular that lends authenticity to the proceedings. Written in the 1930s, Thieves Like Us is very much a product of its time. Its palpable sense of desperation and disillusionment fits right in with the mood of a nation struggling against hard economic conditions.

Brilliant proto-hardboiled novel

Written in 1937, Thieves Like Us--while not the first hardboiled novel (that honor goes to the work of Dashiell Hammett, hands down)--is nevertheless one of the great hardboiled classics. Basis for two films--Nicholas Ray's 1948 They Live By Night and Robert Altman's 1974 film of the same name--it tells of working class joes during the Depression who make a living by robbing banks, talking about it as white-collar slobs would a day at the office. Only with a lot more slang, spice, and color.The writing is brisk, fresh, and succinct. Anderson is great at capturing the feel of the time, through the terrific dialogue and his clean punchy prose. Thieves Like Us is a real joy to read because it's a no BS book; you can really feel the characters when you're reading it like they were right next to you.That violence is a natural part of that life goes without saying. The violence portrayed is done so without gore or sensationalism--it's beautifully integrated into the story, adding that much more to the power and resonance of this work.Who should read this? Those who want to know where hardboiled came from. Those who want a strong sense of American literature--i.e., what America contributed to world literature. Those who are students of the Depression, adding to their understanding of that period. And those who love a great story.A true classic. Don't miss!

birth of a genre?

You've got to feel sorry for the guy who originates a genre. When he creates his work it's so original and exciting that it spawns a legion of imitators, but decades down the road, when folks pick up that seminal work, it feels dated and derivative. This seems to be the case with Thieves Like Us. When it was published, Anderson was compared to Faulkner and Hemingway. Then it looks like the book experienced lengthy periods when it was out of print, experienced revivals when it was twice adapted for the movies and currently enjoys a fairly strong reputation as a representative noir crime story from the Depression, along the lines of Hammett or Chandler. Now those are some pretty weighty comparisons to be throwing around, and I don't know that they are fair, but the book will stand quite nicely on it's own.Anderson tells the story of three convicts: Elmo "Chicamaw" Mobley, T.W. "T-Dub" Masefield and Bowie Bowers, who escape from an Alcatona, OK prison in 1935 and return to the only jobs they are any good at--robbing banks. The three quickly pile up a tidy sum of cash and start living high on the hog, at which point the story focusses on Bowers and his courtship of a young girl named Keechie. The plot elements are familiar: folks don't mind the boys robbing banks because so many lost their bank deposits in the Crash that they figure bankers are thieves, alcohol and gambling eat away at the money pretty quickly, everyone dreams of going straight and just needs a little sum of ready cash to do so but that cash always seems to disappear, young lovers go on the lam, there's sensationalistic press coverage and when the boys set out to commit one last robbery, we're fairly sure there's trouble ahead. But it's all deftly handled, in spare, punchy prose and, except for some brief sermonizing about evil capitalists, it's reasonably free of working class cant; a seminal work of crime fiction.GRADE: B+