Go Down Together

Starred review from January 19, 2009
May 23, 2009, will be the 75th anniversary of the bloody deaths of the Depression's dynamic crime duo.
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde
Jeff Guinn
. Simon & Schuster
, $27 (480p) ISBN 978-1-4165-5706-7

Journalist Guinn (Our Land Before We Die
), in this intensely readable account, deromanticizes two of America's most notorious outlaws (they were “never... particularly competent crooks”) without undermining the mystique of the Depression-era gunslingers. Clyde Barrow, a scrawny kid in poverty-stricken West Dallasin the late 1920s, stole chickens before moving on to cars, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Buck. In 1930, he met 19-year-old Bonnie Parker, and during the next four years Clyde, Bonnie and the ever-revolving members of the Barrow Gang robbed banks and armories all over the South, murdering at least seven people. Bonnie, who fancied herself a poet, wrote, “Some day they'll go down together,” and they did, in a Louisiana ambush led by famed ex–Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. With the brisk pacing of a novel, Guinn's richly detailed history will leave readers breathless until the final hail of bullets. 16 pages of b&w photos.