Pretty Boy Floyd

Starred review from August 29, 1994
As plain and affecting as a Woody Guthrie ballad, this re-creation of the crooked career of the Depression-era desperado/folk hero is Pulitzer Prize-winner McMurtry's (Lonesome Dove) first collaborative effort; he and screenwriter Ossana originally wrote this story as a filmscript. In 1925, after foolishly paying with (ill-gotten) cash for a brand-new Studebaker and driving home to visit his teenage wife and infant son, 21-year-old Oklahoma farm boy Charles Arthur Floyd is arrested and imprisoned for armed robbery. Released after four years, Floyd loses his new job because he's an ex-con. Arrested twice for vagrancy, he returns to the outlaw life and meets rodeo rider-turned-bandit George Birdwell when both he and Floyd strut in to rob the same bank at the same time. The outlaws embark on a reckless spree marked by small-town heists and artless women until Floyd-captured and convicted but escaped-kills a deputy and Birdwell is shot dead by a bookkeeper during a bank robbery. Heading north, Floyd eventually becomes the quarry of legendary G-man Melvin Purvis. Told in homely prose that's perfectly wedded to its subject, this engaging tragicomic novel is as much a study of quiet desperation as of crime and punishment. 275,000 first printing; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; author tour.

June 15, 1994
Pulitzer Prize winner McMurtry and Osanna, his screenwriting partner, here turn their attention to the larger-than-life gangster Pretty Boy Floyd. You bet there's a movie in the offing.

August 1, 1994
The media dubbed Charley Floyd "Pretty Boy Floyd" because folks said that for a bank robber he was a kindfaced and kindhearted man. McMurtry and Ossana, who have collaborated previously on screenplays, deliver a fictionalized though believable depiction of the charming outlaw. Charley pulls his first job in 1925 but gets busted and serves a short stint in the pen. Nevertheless, Charley soon improves his techniques with help from various bandits he meets along the way, and with the new mix of experience and finesse, he becomes an unstoppable and admired criminal. Things start to turn nasty, though, when murder becomes commonplace; after Dillinger is finally gunned down, the feds dub Charley public enemy number one. The simplicity and enchantment of the story fade as Charley's wife and son are endangered, not to mention the many friends and family members who helped him along the way. The full and lively minor characters give readers a personal connection that will take them by surprise, for such an allegiance is unusual in stories using this often-clichd setting. ((Reviewed August 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)