PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE The Alvin Karpis Story

Hardback. SIGNED. Thief, kidnapper, bank and mail train robber, bootlegger, this was Canadian-born Alvin Karpis who, in this book, gives an account of his life as America's Public Enemy Number One during the gangster-ridden days of the Depression. "Old Creepy" as he was known, was born in Montreal and was eventually extradited to Canada. It was for the very reason that he was a Canadian that Karpis was able to give this vivid, violent account of the underworld because parole regulations in the US precluded publication of personal memoirs. He recounts it all - his friendships with the most notorious of professional crooks, his duel of nerve and wits with J. Edgar Hoover. Finally he was captured in 1946 by the FBI and Hoover himself. Karpis maintains this made Hoover's reputation. Held on $400,000 bail, largest in history at that time, Karpis escaped the electric chair but went on to serve more time in Alcatraz than any other convict - including 17yrs in solitary. As he says in his autobiography : "a thief is someone who gets out and works for his living, like robbing a bank, or breaking into a place and stealing stuff, or kidnapping somebody (sentenced to life for the kidnapping of William Hamm Jr. of the Hamm Breweries in Minneapolis-St. Paul). He really gives some effort to it." Fully Illus. with photographs of the period + Epilogue. 256pp. 8vo. h/back. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY ALVIN KARPIS. Nr. F. in Nr. F. protected dw.