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. . . . It’s exciting, lighthearted, and completely realistic. . . . 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 gives us more excitement than a whole fistful of novels. . . . Even though [Cresta] 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.”—Booklist (starred review)“An affectionate look at a true craftsman of crime, one who cared as much for his friends as he did for the rush he’d get whenever he opened the back of a stolen armored car. . . . It’s the details of the Cresta story that give Final Confession its charm—because Wallace and Crowley make plain that Cresta’s wild run lasted not because of the fear he engendered on the street but because of his painstaking dedication to craft. . . . Final Confession also charms because of the eye that [the authors] have for the humorous moments that flecked an otherwise grim and unforgiving life.”—Michael Rezendes, Boston Globe