cover image The Great Heist

The Great Heist

Jeff McArthur. Bandwagon, , $12.95 ISBN 978-1-4935-3269-8

Nebaska native McArthur (Pro Bono: The 18-Year Defense of Caril Ann Fugate) goes into exhaustive detail in this meandering account of a 1930 armed robbery of Nebraska’s Lincoln National Bank, in which six men, armed with pistols and Thompson submachine guns, got away with nearly three million dollars (a record for that time). The first chapter is a blow-by-blow account of the actual robbery. The story loses focus thereafter, spreading out in directions only distantly related to the heist. McArthur discusses the effects on the bank and the community of losing that much money in the days before federal insurance; he also tells of the founding of the Secret Six, a group of rich businessmen dedicated to combating lawlessness in Chicago, who were not in any way involved in the heist, and includes an entire chapter on Al Capone, who was only peripherally linked to the crime. More pertinent parts describe the desperate efforts of Lincoln DA Max Towle to nab somebody for the crime and possibly get the money back. Unfortunately, the many sidetracks in McArthur’s narrative take away from the story of the crime. [em](BookLife) [/em]