Before he was a terrible actor and a mediocre comedian, Dane Cook was an above-average comedian. Back then, he had a funny bit about what all men wanted: a pet monkey, and to participate in a heist. I’ve never wanted a monkey; I’m too realistic for that. They smell, they fling their feces, and there’s always the possibility they will tear the flesh from your still-living face. A heist, though…That’s a little more interesting. There is something undeniably seductive about the planning, intricacy, and payoff of a well-executed heist. That said, I won’t be quitting my day job. Usually, when I think of the heist genre, I think of movies. Heists lend themselves to films, from great movies (Heat), chatty movies (Heist), confusing movies (Mission: Impossible), and disappointing movies (The Score). When I picked up Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves, I wondered if the heist genre could translate to the page. The answer: sort of. I’m calling Prince of Thieves a heist story because – despite Hogan’s aspirations for a psychological thriller – it relies on every heist cliché in the book. It has a crook with a heart of gold named Doug MacRay. Doug was a former hockey star who threw away his career because of alcohol and a bad temper. Now he’s in AA and there are numerous scenes in the book with portentous discussions about addiction (rather than adding complexity, these scenes were awfully preachy). Oh, did I forget to mention this about Doug? He’s looking for one last score. His band of merry men include the psychopath (Jem), the tech guy (Dez), and the fourth leg, who’s there to balance the table (Gloansy). These guys are childhood friends from the Charlestown area of Boston, which forces you to compare this book, unfairly to Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. According to Hogan, the Charlestown area, or “The Town” as it’s called by its untraveled citizens, is the armored car and bank robbery capitol of America. Or at least it was in the 90s, when this book is set (in case you forget it’s set in the 90s, there are dozens of 90s pop culture references strewn throughout). Facing off against this crew is – you got it – a dogged law enforcement officer. In this case, it’s FBI Agent Adam Frawley. Also thrown into the mix is a local gang leader who runs a floral shop, and Jem’s sister, Krista, who is in love with Doug. Also, there’s Clare Keesey. She’s the branch manager at a bank that the crew hits early in the book. They take her as a hostage, and then let her go. And then Doug starts dating her. This isn’t really a cliché, I suppose, it’s just ridiculous. Prince of Thieves goes to great lengths trying to make us believe this relationship, but it fails. You know how they say you can’t start a relationship based on a lie? Well, that’s true, especially when the lie is “No, I totally didn’t take you hostage in that bank heist I pulled off!” Unfortunately, this relationship is the bedrock of the book, because it’s where Doug gets his motivations. Accordingly, Doug’s actions towards the end of the book veer towards “huh?” As if this wasn’t bad enough, Hogan half heartedly adds a further complication to the Doug/Clare relationship. That comes from Agent Frawley, who decides he wants to date Clare as well. Insert eye roll. Overall, I really disliked the way that Hogan treated Frawley in the book. He’s supposed to be the hero, or at least, a likeable foil. Instead, the things he does makes him an ass. Part of his catalogue of misdeeds includes breaking and entering, illegal search and seizure, and dating a material witness. The only thing he doesn’t do is use the US Constitution as a napkin to wipe his mouth after breakfast at a local Dunkin’ Donuts. The defense of a book like this is that it’s supposed to be “fun.” Most of the time, when I hear that, I assume that “fun” is a euphemism for intellectual laziness, or dearth of creativity, or crap story punctuated by explosions. But Prince of Thieves isn’t supposed to be fun, I don’t think. It actually reaches for seriousness, darkness, and resonance; it just fails. That’s not to say Prince of Thieves is without merits. (Though its title is without merit). The best character is The Town itself. Hogan invests a great deal of time explaining its history, geography, and effect on its residents. Some of the most fascinating scenes explores the gentrification of such an old, immigrant-based working class neighborhood. In those scenes, I would compare this favorably to Richard Price’s Lush Life. Furthermore, Hogan is a talented writer. There are some groaner lines, to be sure, but he does a pretty good job with the dialogue, and I enjoyed the witty banter between the four old friends. I also appreciated the fact that Hogan didn’t dwell on the last big score. There isn’t a scene in which the main character lays everything out, and explains how they’re going to have to simultaneously reroute the computers, switch out the tapes on the security cameras, and tango across a room full of laser beams. Instead, you don’t find out how they’re carrying out the heist until they’re doing it. The heist story is a closed universe. It is a house already built. Once inside, you can change the furniture, paint the walls, add a deck, but you have to stay within the structure. That means one of two things: your protagonist is riding off to the sunset, or he’s going to the grave. In Prince of Thieves, you can sense Chuck Hogan straining at these limitations, without ever managing to exceed them.
I must have larceny in my heart because whenever I see an armored car, I always have that brief moment of idle thought where I wonder how much cash it’s carrying and if I could come up with a plan to rob one and get away with it. Apparently I should have been born in the Charlestown area of Boston because hijacking armored trucks used to be a major pastime of some it’s residents.Set in the mid-’90s, Doug MacRay is a former hockey star who blew his chance at going pro and is now a recovering alcoholic. He’s also the brains of a crew that has had a good run of looting banks and armored cars. Doug is smart enough to realize that between the gentrification of Charlestown and the new anti-theft technologies being introduced that the days of old school armed robbery are numbered. Doug longs for something more than stealing and the Town lifestyle. However, his fellow thief Jem is determined to keep Doug around for good by getting him to start drinking with the boys again and pushing Doug to renew the relationship he used to have with Jem’s sister.While robbing a bank, Doug’s crew ends up taking the manager, Claire, as a hostage. Doug becomes infatuated with Claire, and starts following her around after the robbery. He eventually manages to worm his way into her life. He knows it’s stupid, especially with eager FBI agent Frawley keeping tabs on her, but Doug has convinced himself that a life with Claire is the motivation he needs to finally get his act together and get out of Charlestown.This novel functions on two levels. Part of it is a razor sharp heist story with Doug and his crew trying to outwit Frawley and the cops. The other part is a character study of a guy struggling to break the old ties that are holding him back but can never quite manage to shake himself free. The backdrop is also interesting because Charlestown was once the home to various Irish mob connections and a hotbed of armed robbery, but now it's about to be changed forever by the coming of the yuppies. Setting it in the ‘90’s, when both the cops and the smarter robbers realize that new technology is about to change their game forever also gave the story the feeling of being the end of an era.Great action, believable characters, solid writing and a rich setting made for one terrific crime novel.*A Few Notes About the Movie Version*Originally published as Prince of Thieves, this is the second crime novel adaptation that Ben Affleck has done as a screenwriter and director. While I didn’t like it quite as much as Gone, Baby, Gone, it’s still a very good flick with great performances. Affleck has a knack for making the changes necessary to condense a novel into a film while keeping the tone and major themes intact. He also showed a surprising flair for big action sequences, including one of the more exciting chase scenes I’ve seen in recent memory. You won’t see a better movie with a van load of nuns toting automatic weapons.
What do You think about Prince Of Thieves (2004)?
I wasn't planning to read this book. I found it on sale at a bookstore so I bought it. I saw the movie and I thought it was good. At first, there were loads of things I wasn't yet familiar with (such as the details of bank robbery, armored trucks, hockey, Irish community etc.) It was predominantly a male thing. But as I kept on reading, I learned a lot about such things. The writer is so skilled and left no detail to chance and I was very fond of the protagonist; an antihero but the sort of man who was internally beautiful & very interesting. An emotional and cautious guy with a tough shell. This is a story about a man named Doug, who used to be a hockey star in his community. His father was a bank robber too but now in jail and his mother was said to have left them when he was a kid. Doug also have spent time in jail and when he got out, he became a full time robber along with his three friends. He was also a recovering alcoholic and was determined to avoid alcohol and start a new life. The story started with the four friends robbing a bank where he met the love of his life named Claire Keesey. She was a bank manager. She was exactly what Doug needed in his life; a good girl. Doug was a smart and cautious man. He would spend time researching and covering their tracks. In this job, he stalked Claire for a few weeks prior to the robbery. Then he fell in love with her. After the robbery, Claire was traumatized and Doug appeared to be the knight in shining armor when in fact he was the cause of it. There were lots of conflicts and anxieties that had to be dealt with including the detective working on the case who was also interested in Claire. This detective could not be taken lightly because he was a good one and stubborn as well. He was to the police what Doug was to robbery. The detective,whose aim was to solve the case and catch the criminals, seemed to be the villain instead and the robber was the hero. Although the book was very good, I actually thought that Ben Affleck's decision to change the ending was better than it had been originally. I didn't particularly like that Claire seemed to have lost her trust and affection for Doug. Doug died bleeding in front of Claire and she seemed to have claimed her freedom at that very moment. Doug was foolish to give in to that one last job. Oh well, there are probably things that a man has to do and be a man. Doug was that lonely man you wish you had known and became friends with. He was surrounded by people who could not help him to change what he was and be what he wanted to be. He had that one last chance to start a new life, but ties with friends and brotherhood were hard to break. He had a chance to claim his own freedom but he gave in to the needs and demands of others. Such a lonely story. That's why I like Ben Affleck's movie because at the end, Doug became free and there was so much hope. There was so much future for him.
—Sarah
The worst part of this book was I had the movie tie-in cover so everytime I picked the thing up I had to look at Ben Affleck's face. Worse than his face (which is bad enough), but his profile, framed in some type of thought-provoking prose which, for me, is a disturbing image. Other than that, I thought this was a pretty good character-driven crime story, but it didn't have the hard edge I was hoping for. Characters were well developed for the most part, but were a little caricaturish and they lacked the depth and dimension to really make me care about them other than the central character, Doug McRay, so I never really felt much for them, especially Claire, who I really should have had feelings for, and Frawley, the FBI agent. Frawley was really the most upsetting character in the book for me because as an FBI agent, he was supposed to be "the good guy" and he was anything but. I don't mind crime stories from the point of view of the criminal and I don't mind when authors glamorize their villainous main characters, but I don't like it when the chief protaganist is someone working on the side of the law and the reasons why he's acting worse than the criminals aren't made clear. The robberies in the story were interesting to read about and well plotted, but they all came off too quickly. Yes, I'd recommend this book because it was entertaining and a fast read, but after everything's said and done, there really isn't much here. The best part of the book for me was that my impression of Ben Affleck is so different than the Doug MacRay charcter that I had no problem keeping images of Ben Affleck out of my mind while reading so the story was never tainted with thoughts of B.A. I actually liked Doug MacRay and, in case you can't tell, I'm not too crazy about Ben Affleck.
—Michael
Took awhile cause I wasn't sure what to write about this book... I had a good time reading this...the novel opened quietly but with a bang as well. Jem had me groaning and wanting to smack him from the beginning, you can tell from the small glimpse there he's a little off balance.I wouldn't call this a "slow paced" novel, to me its more "steady"... it lets events unfold without rushing things and you get a glimpse into everyone's lives and heads. You root for them even though you know that something has to give... Frawley and Dino were interesting guys, passionate and dedicated to their jobs, as they get closer to apprehending the foursome, you cross your fingers they won't get caught but at the same time I was secretly hoping Doug and Dez would get away.. I figured Jem was heading down a more slippery slope than the others.Frawley is a good man, but there were a few times I just wanted to shake and smack him for some of his actions... he wants to protect Claire and is fond of her, he sees her and Doug together (its in the summary so techinally not a spoiler haha)... he lets his humiliation override his professionalism at times, I kept waiting for him to cross more over the line and was crossing my fingers he wouldn't do something he'd regret.Doug and Claire are a sweet couple, it made me smile to see them together but there's a cloud over them with the secrets Doug is keeping from her and you know its gonna catch up with them... Krista I didn't like much throughout the book, and I was with Doug over Jem trying to push them together all the time.. rolling my eyes and gritting my teeth with Doug. She grows a little bit at the end but it was hard for me to tell if she was still being genuine or not. There was sort of an undercurrent (right word?) between her and Jem at times that made me wonder *shudders* but who knows?The ending beginning after the final scene of the book, shows a bit of a carefree part before everything goes downhill... the last line with a sort of passing thought from Doug kinda makes you smile.I think this is more for the patient reader, if your expecting a fast paced novel then this may not be for you (though I could be wrong).Loved Mr Hogan's writing style, its great when an author can create a setting/atmosphere and make you feel your living it right alongside the people in the book :).This still didn't turn out how I wanted haha, but I really did enjoy this book... *waves bye*
—TL
