Thieves Like Us

“One of the great forgotten novels of the 30s.”
– Raymond Chandler

Somewhere between the hardboiled talk of Dashiell Hammett and the dustbowl poetry of John Steinbeck lies the doomed romanticism of Edward Anderson’s ‘Thieves Like Us’. When three small-time country gangsters break jail, they return, like moths to a flame, to the only life they know – smalltown bank-robbing. And when Bowie, the youngest of them, falls in love with Keechie, one of the older gangster’s cousins, it becomes a classic tale of love with nowhere to hide and no hope of reprieve.

First published in 1937, ‘Thieves Like Us’ was powerfully adapted for the screen by Nicholas Ray in 1948 as ‘They Live by Night’ and once again under its original title by Robert Altman in 1973.