The Last Good Heist: The Inside Story of the Biggest Single Payday in the Criminal History of the Northeast

This limp account of a now obscure robbery in 1975 Providence, R.I., will raise questions for readers about its reliability. The crime at the center of the book involves the theft of the contents of 148 safety deposit boxes concealed at Hudson Fur Storage. On the afternoon of Aug. 14th, a group of eight gun-wielding thieves entered the building, secured the employees, and made off with the equivalent today of $140 million in jewels, rare coins, stamps, and cash, none of which was ever recovered. The narrative provides the background to the crime, including the criminal history of Robert "Deuce" Dussault, the "career thug" who orchestrated the event. By 1975, Dussault had already spent half of his life in jail. Despite this, the authors treat him as an admirable antihero (his "major assets are an outdated sense of derring-do, fast hands, and a quick lip"). The acknowledgments section at the book's end reveals that Dussault provided "countless" hours of interviews, and the authors make no effort to explain what steps, if any, they took to verify his version of events. The narrative devotes most of its space to atmospheric details and stylized prose, prioritizing the thrill of the story over its credibility. (Aug.)