Richard Whittemore and his bride, Margaret, dreamed of a better life for themselves. It was the 1920s and fortunes were being made overnight by the cunning and unscrupulous. Following a brief stint in prison, Richard organized a series of high-profile heists and robberies with the assistance of two criminal brothers. The media breathlessly profiled his exploits; for a period of a few months he and Margaret lived luxuriously, sleeping until past noon and enjoying expensive steaks in high-end clubs. But the police were already closing in, galvanized into action by the killing of a security guard during a prison break. Glen Stout deftly uses the story of this tumultuous couple as a window into American life in the Roaring Twenties, a time when advances in technology—canned goods, refrigerators, cars—promised to make life easier, but violence and wealth inequality threatened to tear it apart. (BH)