Pretty Boy Floyd

Book excerpt: The time is 1925. The place, St. Louis, Missouri. Charley Floyd, a good-looking, sweet-smiling country boy from Oklahoma, is about to rob his first armored car. Written by Pulitzer Prize–winner Larry McMurtry and his writing partner, Diana Ossana, Pretty Boy Floyd traces the wild career of the legendary American folk hero Charley Floyd, a young man so charming that it's hard not to like him, even as he's robbing you at gunpoint. From the bank heists and shootings that make him Public Enemy Number One to the women who love him, from the glamour-hungry nation that worships him to the G-men who track Charley down, Pretty Boy Floyd is both a richly comic masterpiece and an American tragedy about the price of fame and the corruption of innocence.