Final Confession: The Unsolved Crimes of Phil Cresta
You wouldn't necessarily expect a true-crime book to be a whole lot of fun, but this one is. Like William Friedkin's 1978 filmThe Brinks Job, it's exciting, lighthearted, and completely realistic. As crime writer Dennis Lehane points out in his foreword, too many true-crime memoirs tend to present their subjects in a less-than-accurate light, trading on ourGodfather-inspired perception of criminals as loyal, honorable, wealthy people. The truth, as the authors make abundantly clear here, is somewhat less glamorous. Phil Cresta and his cohorts were a band of thieves--very clever thieves, to be sure, but thieves nonetheless. They weren't particularly honorable, and they certainly weren't wealthy, but this chronicle of their adventures (and the occasional misadventure, such as the armored-car robbery that netted $50 million worth of cancelled checks) gives us more excitement than a whole fistful of novels. According to the authors, Cresta was one of the great unknown criminals, a man responsible for many crimes that remain unsolved to this day. Even though he was a "bad guy," it's awfully hard not to like him. Put this at the top of every true-crime fan's reading list.David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved