Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend

Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend is a strictly nonfictional account of the Depression-era outlaws' criminal career, drawing on FBI documents, archival research, and the outlaws' own words. Paul Schneider reconstructs the landscape of rural Texas poverty that produced Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and follows their increasingly reckless trail across four states to the inevitable ambush that ended it.

Patrick Lawlor narrates with the journalistic authority that the documentary format requires, resisting the romantic mythology that has attached to the story without reducing the subjects to simple villains. The audio format's ability to sustain the road-trip momentum of the story works in its favor, and Lawlor keeps the crime spree's geography legible even as the pace accelerates toward its violent conclusion.