Dannemora

January 1, 2019
This latest true-crime account of the 2015 Dannemora prison break is told by a former New York State Department of Corrections officer. The first half of the book outlines the protagonists' backgrounds: career criminals Richard Matt and David Sweat, corrupt guard Gene Palmer, and tailor-shop contract employee Joyce Mitchell. Gardner lionizes rank-and-file officers, who he felt were overburdened with excess duties?which opened the door to Matt and Sweat's escape?then charged with tirelessly combing the countryside for the escapees. Also examined is the tailor shop where Matt and Sweat fraternized with Mitchell, a major money-maker for the Department of Corrections where daily supervision of inmates was farmed out to private contractors rather than trained officers. This dramatic story will be of keen interest to those following the Showtime series Escape at Dannemora?, and book clubs might pair this with New York Daily News reporter Chelsia Marcius' Wild Escape (2018) for the first-person interviews with sole-survivor Sweat. A true community insider's perspective on a legendary manhunt.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)