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The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd
by Jeffery S. King
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Kent State University Press (1998-03)
ISBN: 0873385829
EAN: 9780873385824
Dewy Decimal #: 364.1092
Hardcover: 242 pages
SKU: 080603003
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: This Ex-Library copy is in very good condition. Theres the usual stamps/sticker/library marking on front endpaper & contents page. Otherwise, No visible markings, highlights, underlining, tears to text. Tight spine. Top fore-edge has library stamp. Clean Hard Cover and Dust Jacket. Hard Cover has 2 strips of clear scotch tape to top/bottom of Front/back cover. Light shelf/edge wear. Very interesting copy, worth having at an affordable price. (L10-20)
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Charles Arthur Floyd, better known as Pretty Boy Floyd (1904-1934), was one of the last of the so-called Robin Hood outlaws in the tradition of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and John Dillinger. He engaged in numerous bank-robbing exploits across the Midwest until federal agents and local police shot him down near East Liverpool, Ohio, on October 22, 1934 -- a feat which helped build the image of the modern FBI. This detailed account of his life, crimes, and death makes extensive use of FBI reports, government records, local newspapers, and contemporary journalistic accounts. Neither highly intelligent nor polished, Floyd relied on his cool demeanor, shrewd cunning, and expert gun-handling ability, but he was also considered by those who knew him to be generous and honest. During the depression, many people saw banks as enemies and Floyd as a hero and helped screen him from the police. Once he left a large contribution at an Oklahoma church -- and no one reported his visit. He was known to drop in at country dances, dance with the prettiest girls, and pay the fiddler well. One story claims that he kept a rural school in fuel one winter. He attended church regularly, even during intense manhunts, and visited his father's grave each Memorial Day, despite the risk of capture. In this biography, Jeffery S. King addresses many of the questions still surrounding Floyd, such as whether he had contact with other notorious outlaws of the period, including Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, and Bonnie and Clyde, and whether he was executed by the FBI. He also links Floyd to the infamous Kansas City Massacre. Particularly notable are King's assessments of the effectiveness of the FBI and of J. EdgarHoover's talent for self-promotion.
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Customer Reviews
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A bit dated.
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-11-10
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book reads as if it were written in the 1930's not the late 1990's. It relies heavily on press clippings of the time and FBI accounts that have since been shown to shed a favorable light on the new FBI and not the pure truth. Mr. King's story of the Kansas City Massacre is very wrong and he relies on stories told to the FBI by Jim "needles" LaCapra who was a punk underworld figure in K.C. at the time. I just felt a bit let down by this lazy attempt at Floyd's story.
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A Short and Violent Life
Rating  (5)
Date: 2003-01-24
6 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
Author Jeffery King has provided us with an interesting account of the short and violent life of Charles Arthur Floyd. Floyd was one of many depression-era desperadoes who focused on bank-robbing as a way of life. One of the things that struck me was the relative ease of breaking out of jail or prison during this time. Another was the putting on display of the dead bodies of gangsters during this time period for the curious public. Floyd was defended by his mother who claimed he didn't do as many things as he was accused of. He apparently agreed to surrender to authorities if he could be assured of life in prison and not get the death penalty. When no such deal was forthcoming, Floyd realized that his time was short and he would be shot to death. Also of interest in this story is the jealously of F.B.I. Director John Edgar Hoover towards officer Melvin Purvis. Hoover had Purvis leave the scene of the shooting of Floyd immediately to minimize the credit given to him. Maybe Hoover should have been focusing on big time mobsters instead of small time hoodlums like Floyd. There also is controversy regarding the death of Floyd and if it was, indeed, necessary to kill him after he had been wounded in an Ohio field. The author has done an excellent job researching this book, and it is worth your time to read it if you are interested in depression era gangsters.
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The Truth About Pretty Boy
Rating (5)
Date: 2001-07-11
9 out of 13 customers found this reveiw helpful
At last an author has examined the documentary evidence of Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd's extensive criminal career, rather than simply relating family and "good ole boy" fables of Floyd's Robin Hood qualities. Or relying on the fantasies of "Blackie" Audett, a minor bank burglar and later Justice Department stool pigeon at Alcatraz who invented tall tales of having known or worked with Pretty Boy, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, the Barker-Karpis gang and just about every other major criminal of the '30's. Audett claimed to have witnessed the crowning achievement of Floyd's career, the Kansas City Union Station massacre--except that by his account Floyd wasn't there and someone else did the shooting. Various other authors--Lou Louderback, Michael Wallis, and Jay Robert Nash (who also bought Audett's tale of having helped Dillinger make a permanent escape by having a double slain in his place!)--have accepted Audett's story of Floyd's innocence. Many of us who have researched the massacre with more care have long been skeptical of Audett's claim but only Jeffery King has bothered to ascertain just where Audett was at the time of the massacre. He was in Leavenworth until July 1933, a whole month after the Union Station killings! King makes a good case for the complicity of Floyd in the massacre and does an equally admirable job of tracking down the elusive details of Floyd's early career in crime, including the fabled Akins post office burglary, which did not involve the theft of $350 in pennies, the probable true origin of the famous nickname, and the many bank robberies. He also nails down the often-doubted but very probable (and brief) association of Floyd with Dillinger and "Baby Face" Nelson and gets us as close as we'll probably ever be to the real story of Pretty Boy's death at the hands of the FBI. This is investigative journalism at its finest and also displays an objectivity sadly lacking in the thicker sweeping bio offered earlier by Michael Wallis.
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Compelling Reading!
Rating  (4)
Date: 1999-09-27
15 out of 19 customers found this reveiw helpful
Jeffrey King has produced a well-researched biography of Pretty Boy Floyd, one of the most infamous bank robbers of the 1930s. Although filled with documentation, this book reads like a novel. I appreciated King's historical analysis of the evidence regarding Floyd's life and death and I had a hard time putting the book down. I found the book to be especially gripping in the section dealing with the final hunt for Floyd by the FBI and Floyd's demise in a rural area of Ohio. The book is reminiscent of John Toland's "The Dillinger Days," which is another fine volume about famous bank robbers of the Depression Era. My only criticism of the book is that King failed to emphasize sufficiently the self-centered, sociopathic character of Floyd. For example, on the last page of the text of the book, King stated that Floyd "had many virtues, such as courage, loyalty to his family and friends, and compassion for those who struggled to survive during the bleak days of the Depression" (p. 210). On the contrary, Floyd cheated on his wife (he often lived with another lover, Beulah Baird, and was known to frequent brothels), and stole from, expoited, threatened, harassed, kidnapped, or killed many innocent victims, including many poor and middle class people. Today, Floyd would be diagnosed as an antisocial personality disorder and he was a sinister man whose criminal deeds, including numourous murders, reaped havoc on dozens, if not hundreds of people. This shortcoming does not overshadow the rest of King's fine work, however. In conclusion, I commend King on completing an excellent book and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a compelling read.
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