- ASIN: B0CQRNV1M3
- Publisher: Mindstir Media (20 Dec. 2023)
- Language: English
- Print length: 316 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN: 1961532050
- Genre: Historical Noir Crime
The BookViral Review:
If you are looking for a read that will hold you in its grip from start to finish then Machine Guns and Typewriters should be on your list of must-read books.
Firing on all cylinders as a Historical Noir Crime thriller, police procedural and investigative newsroom drama, Wallace’s smart, extremely vivid narration oozes period authenticity that puts the reader amid evolving events.
Focusing on the Needham Trust Company robbery of Feb. 2, 1934, the subsequent murders of police officers Francis Oliver Haddock and Forbes McLeod and the high-profile police operation that led to the apprehension of Murton Millen, Irving Millen, and Abraham Faber, Wallace’s meticulous research is never in doubt.
Despite the twists, turns and exceptionally complex detail of ensuing events it’s a credit to Wallace that he manages to make Machine Guns and Typewriters both comprehensible and intensely readable – conveying an astonishing depth of information across his narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension with only a few flashy fictional touches to gussy up the facts.
Machine Guns and Typewriters is as accurate about the processes used by investigative reporters and police officers in the 1930s as we have any right to expect and whilst Wallace could have left us adrift in a sea of names, dates, coincidences, lucky breaks, false leads, dogged footwork, denials, evasions, and countless other details that led to the arrest and eventual execution of Murton Millen, Irving Millen, and Abraham Faber he never allows narrative process to overwhelm narrative.
As revealing as it is Wallace never burrows for the sake of burrowing nor does he veer from Machine Guns and Typewriter’s stoically gripping, journalistic-blotter tone and his depiction of 1930’s journalism is so richly detailed that even in its quieter moments it develops the illusion of momentum.
At its heart Machine Guns and Typewriters is the story of a story: of two intrepid reporters following a lead, almost incredulously at times, and there must have been some temptation by Wallace to flesh out their lives, to change the pace with subplots about their private lives and it’s to Wallace’s credit that he sticks resolutely to the facts and allows these to propel his narrative.
A superb read from beginning to end and a tribute to the first two officers in Massachusetts state history to be murdered by an assailant using a sub-machine gun, Machine Guns and Typewriters is Golden Quill read.
