High Sierra

ROY EARLE, the protagonist of this drama, is Public Enemy No. I. Sprung out of Stir, if you follow me, he is hard and dangerous, but he is not wholly vicious. His mind is twisted by a life of a bad major premise and false logic, but it is not altogether ignoble. He can like — or love — a girl, a dog, and two old people, and he remembers with a sentimental nostalgia the dubious innocence of his youth. In this book the author, whose Little Cœsar was the popular epic of the Capone decade, makes the reader really sympathize with the desperado-hero. Guiltily one hopes that his stick-up of the Tropico Springs Hotel will be highly successful, and, when it fails, that he will escape the unflagging pursuit. He doesn’t, and the wages of his sin is death, which is most edifying, and we are all sorry. Jesse James was a nice man too, and very popular with the people he didn’t rob. This is a tough tale, well told.