WRITING TIGER GIRL

You're researching another book, a long time ago. You come across a headline, two headlines, ten, a hundred. And two names: Tiger Girl and Candy Kid. They work their way in slow at first, first just tapping at your brain's back door, then start hitting like a hammer.

Who are these people?

You finish that other book, then dive in and get sucked down to the bottom. Margaret and Richard. Two kids, Lovers. Who had nothing and shot for the moon, the only way they knew how, the only way they knew. You don't ask; you take. And you don't let anyone or anything get in the way, cops or crooks.

You get to know them, and get to know their time. Denizens of the Jazz Age, two tickets to a time and a place and two people who together tell a story Fitzgerald missed. You put together a proposal. It goes around. Everybody wants it. Then the 2008 recession hits like a punch to the heart; Nobody wants it.

Forget about it.

You try to set it aside. Filing cabinet, bottom drawer. It keeps floating to the top. You write other things but you keep thinking about Margaret and Richard, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid. You see their pictures when you go to sleep. They start to whisper in your ear. You keep learning more, scrolling through mountains of microfilm, brushing off the dust of a century, and listen close. You tell your friends and they keep asking questions you know only you the answers to. They tell you it should be a movie. You've already watched it a million times. Their story starts talking to you while you're reading, watching TV, driving long distances alone or staring in the dark while the clock keeps ticking.

But people tell you not to bother, not to pitch a book everybody already passed on. It NEVER works.

Forget about it.

But it’s already too late. You're all in, over your head and way too deep. And you wait. And wait. Times change, and so do the people who say yes or no.

Besides, by now you know who Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid really are; what the tabloids told you and what they didn't. What they ate and what they drank. How they talked and how they walked.

How they lived and how they died.

...So now you take your shot, a long one, the longest one of your life, this book or nothing...

Bullseye. Your 100th book.

Roll the credits.You're researching another book, a long time ago. You come across a headline, two headlines, ten, a hundred. And two names: Tiger Girl and Candy Kid. They work their way in slow at first, first just tapping at your brain's back door, then start hitting like a hammer.

Who are these people?

You finish that other book, then dive in and get sucked down to the bottom. Margaret and Richard. Two kids, Lovers. Who had nothing and shot for the moon, the only way they knew how, the only way they knew. You don't ask; you take. And you don't let anyone or anything get in the way, cops or crooks.

You get to know them, and get to know their time. Denizens of the Jazz Age, two tickets to a time and a place and two people who together tell a story Fitzgerald missed. You put together a proposal. It goes around. Everybody wants it. Then the 2008 recession hits like a punch to the heart; Nobody wants it.

Forget about it.

You try to set it aside. Filing cabinet, bottom drawer. It keeps floating to the top. You write other things but you keep thinking about Margaret and Richard, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid. You see their pictures when you go to sleep. They start to whisper in your ear. You keep learning more, scrolling through mountains of microfilm, brushing off the dust of a century, and listen close. You tell your friends and they keep asking questions you know only you the answers to. They tell you it should be a movie. You've already watched it a million times. Their story starts talking to you while you're reading, watching TV, driving long distances alone or staring in the dark while the clock keeps ticking.

But people tell you not to bother, not to pitch a book everybody already passed on. It NEVER works.

Forget about it.

But it’s already too late. You're all in, over your head and way too deep. And you wait. And wait. Times change, and so do the people who say yes or no.

Besides, by now you know who Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid really are; what the tabloids told you and what they didn't. What they ate and what they drank. How they talked and how they walked.

How they lived and how they died.

...So now you take your shot, a long one, the longest one of your life, this book or nothing...

Bullseye. Your 100th book.

Roll the credits.

Here's what they’re saying about it:

"Straight out of Ben Hecht by way of Damon Runyon, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid are the Adam and Eve of jazz-mad flappers and mad-dog killers. Avid and dynamic, this is Glenn Stout at his storytelling best, delivering a meticulous history with a kick like bathtub gin: Of a man and a woman fallen at the founding of modern America - that revved-up white-hot electric-chair America of sensational tabloid crime and smash-and-grab capitalism, of sudden money and sex and excess, reckless ambition and lies and violence, all of it spinning a blur - and woven now into the perfect book for our own roaring moment." —Jeff MacGregor, Smithsonian Magazine

"Reported with a historian's careful research and written with a novelist's mastery of character and scene, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid is a true-crime thriller embedded with a love story, set in the intoxicating glamour of the Roaring Twenties. A fast-paced, exhilarating read, the story unfolds like cinematic noir. This book deserves a place on the shelf next to Devil in the White City as a gem of true-crime narrative nonfiction."—Kim Cross, New York Times best-selling author of What Stands in a Storm

“Compared to Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid, Bonnie and Clyde were pikers. The original gangster couple was more ruthless, more captivating, and far more clever, the inspiration for the gangster movies made in their wake. As you read Stout’s deeply researched, fast-moving account – covering a multi-year crime spree, courtroom dramas, and an unexpected denouement -- you’ll keep asking yourself: why hadn’t I heard of them before? If Tiger Girl and Candy Kid doesn’t become a blockbuster movie, Hollywood is broken.”—John U. Bacon, bestselling author of The Great Halifax Explosion

"It’s strange what we forget. Margaret and Richard Whittemore were Jazz Age icons, their gang’s jewel heists and bank robberies the stuff of bandit legend. Chased down by detectives and time, their love-and-crime story was lost to all but the Underworld—until Glenn Stout brought their exploits back to vivid life in this shining, meticulous book. In a way, Stout’s fine-eyed attention is one last score for Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid. Nobody knew better the value of a professional."—Chris Jones, author of Out of Orbit

"Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid brings the Roaring Twenties to life. With his meticulous research and vivid writing, Glenn Stout captures the era’s perverse version of the American Dream, in all of its excesses and envy. Stout imbues century-old jewelry robberies with heart-stopping suspense. Beyond that, he shows how his protagonists birthed the archetypes of the bad boy gangster and the gun moll, and how the breathless coverage of their crimes created the true crime genre."—Greg Hanlon, People

"This is a get-away car of a book -- you dive in and hold on tight and trust the driver as the tires burn, the police sirens wail in the distance, and all that 1920s Americana rushes by outside."—Ben Montgomery, author of Grandma Gatewood's Walk and A Shot in the Moonlight

"[A] rollicking true crime tale...Stout colorfully evokes the era’s political issues and cultural trends, and describes how Prohibition increased disrespect for the law across American society. This snappy page-turner informs and delights."—Publishers Weekly

Rip-roaring account of the Jazz Age’s most-feared gangster couple. Before infamous criminal lovebirds Bonnie and Clyde, there were Richard “Candy Kid” and Margaret (“Tiger Girl” Whittemore, whose big-city jewel heists and bank robberies made the Barrow Gang’s stickups look like candy snatching in comparison. In his latest, journalist and sportswriter Stout raises his game a notch, transitioning from quaint sports history books to this true-crime barn burner, set against the backdrop of a post–World War I America rolling in wealth and prosperity. “Bank vaults were full and brimming over,” writes the author, “and all the businesses that catered to this newfound wealth—the jewelers and furriers and night clubs and jazz joints and new car lots—were raking it in by the fistful.” Both brought up in Baltimore with virtually no economic prospects, Richard and Margaret married young and faced uncertain futures, with Richard engaging in petty thefts that saw him in and out of prison with not much to show for it. However, it wasn’t long before he began making powerful contacts in the criminal underworld and attempting more formidable crime sprees—with his wife by his side. The couple moved from Baltimore to more cosmopolitan climes like Philadelphia and New York, working within a criminal syndicate robbing banks or staging jewelry heists. As they found further success in the criminal game, they enjoyed a glamorous lifestyle of all-night parties, luxury apartments, and fast cars. However, Richard’s inevitable downfall came at the age of 25, when an informant turned him in. Stout’s fast-paced prose has a Mickey Spillane–like cadence to it that fits his subject matter perfectly. The narrative is unrelenting to the bitter end, when Richard had to confront the kind of forced early retirement that guys in his profession almost invariably faced. A compulsively readable criminal biography as well as a vivid cultural snapshot of early Prohibition-era America. - Kirkus Reviews