Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd

One wonders as one reads Michael Wallis' excellent biography how Charley survived as long as he did. Lotsa luck, of course, but wit and cunning, too. Still, his life was surprisingly short, violent and unproductive.This is a superbly written historical biography. Wallis writes like he talks with a sort of breathless ironic patter filled with pathos seasoned by the odd humorous anecdote.I first read this book a few years ago and recently decided to read it again. It's just as good the second time around. Don't get me wrong. Pretty Boy Floyd is, to me at least, a character it's hard to love. I don't see him as a Robin Hood: his documented acts of kindness or generosity are few and far between. Most, I suspect, are apocryphal. My own father told a story of an encounter with Pretty Boy at my grandfather's Shawnee, Oklahoma gas station in 1933. A big tip was supposedly proffered and a Shawnee News Star headline about a police chase following can't be found in their archives. So you never know.Michael Wallis is a writer whose other works are accurate, well written and thoroughly documented. So is this. Whether one likes Pretty Boy Floyd is really inconsequential. He existed, the times he lived through occurred and the story deserves to be told. Wallis does a fine job of telling it.Our subject was a criminal who robbed because cotton farming was hard work. But he was also most likely legally assassinated by Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover and local and federal law enforcement authorities. Due process in 1934 America was a concept not yet explored extensively.And it's unlikely Floyd was involved in the Kansa City Massacre. Wallis presents the facts and you get to draw your own conclusions. The bottom line, of course, is that in the end it didn't matter. Hoover justified shooting down Floyd by accusing him of the Kansas City job.This is an easy book to read. Michael Wallis is at his best. He describes folks as well as any author today. He tells wonderful little stories and paints vivid word pictures that keep you turning the pages.I predict you'll like it.

I bought this book both for the historical information about this era and to prove or disprove fables and rumors I'd heard most of my life. Where we live old timers were always saying their daddy worked with Charlie Floyd or their mama fed him lunch once. I found the book to be basically well-researched, especially the interviews with the Floyd family. I'm not sure even our oldsters knew Charley had LIVED among us, just that he passed through while robbing our banks! He supposedly camped some times but lots of fellas were doing that especially when housing during the oil boom was almost non-existent. I've heard all my life that Pretty Boy Floyd had family in Earlsboro but don't think I ever heard that it was his brother. And my mother-in-law's great uncle was in the bank at Meeker when who they thought was Floyd robbed it. According to this book it may have really been him. But I do have a couple "bones" to pick with the author. He misspelled the name of a local town (Conawa should be Konawa) and he says that police officers "shot down Wilbur Underhill in downtown Shawnee" which is not the facts. Underhill and his gang were shot up at his house, he escaped and made his way to a building downtown were he was eventually captured. I know this is fact as I used to walk by the house on my way to school and for a while you could still see the bullet holes. It's at least five miles from "downtown". This was either a slip up in the author's research or it could mean some of his other research is a little suspect. But the book is well-written, entertainlng and I like the way he weaves daily history into Floyd's story.

This is an exellent book that captures the era that Charles Arthur Floyd lived and died in.Wallis is an exellent writer that has a knack for capturing the actual feel of an era and bringing it back to life.I enjoy his style very much and his books are well worth reading.Charles Arthur Floyd was a small time Midwestern crook with a heart as big as his penchant for robbing banks.He was a depression era kid that, like many of his kind,became sick of living the hard scrabble life of a Midwest farm community and found out it was easier to rob banks.He cut a swath through the Midwest and became famous for his bank robberies and for the fact that when he robbed the banks he quite often tore up the morgage contracts of the farmers and local people to help them avoid having to pay the bank back for their property loans.When he wasn't robbing banks he was helping his wife bake pies.He was never the hardcore criminal J.Edgar Hoover made him out to be.Hoover was trying to build a reputation for his new law enforcement organization known as the FBI and he exaggerated the exploits of Floyd to make him apear more evil than he was, Hoover gave Ma Barker the same treatment.Floyd was no babe in the woods or angel but he was never the cold blooded killer Hoover made him out to be.Hoover sent Melven Pervis to run Floyd down and kill him and that is exactly what he did, Pervis later said that he regretted having to kill Floyd.Wallis captures this hard scrabble lawless era very well and you get a real feel for what life was like in that era.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in what life was like in the Midwest during the depression and the type of characters that came from it such as Floyd.-FS

But I was disappointed as it was more about the times than the life. It's very well written, Wallis clearly knows the era and the history inside out, but I got a bit tired of the potted history of every state, city and town Floyd ever went to, the background of what seemed to be every single criminal and law officer to have dealings with him, etc. After finishing the book I didn't feel I knew much more about Floyd than I did when I started.

Interesting Book.

Good look at who Floyd really was.