Blessed Are the Bank Robbers:
The True Adventures of an Evangelical Outlaw
by Chas Smith
DETAILS:
Publisher: Abrams Press
Publication Date: March 14, 2022
Format: Hardcover
Length: 264 pg.
Read Date: April 11-18, 2022
What’s Blessed Are the Bank Robbers About?
From the Publisher’s Site:
Chas Smith grew up deeply enmeshed in the evangelical Christian world that grew out of Southern California in the late 1960s. His family included famous missionaries and megachurch pastors, but his cousin Daniel Courson was Grandma’s favorite. Smith looked up to Cousin Danny. He was handsome, adventurous, and smart, earned a degree from Bible college, and settled into a family and a stable career.
Needless to say, it was a big surprise when Cousin Danny started robbing banks. Known as the “Floppy Hat Bandit,” Courson robbed 19 of them in a torrid six-week spree before being caught and sentenced to seven years. When he tried to escape, they tacked on another year. And when he finally got out, despite seeming to be back on the straight and narrow, Cousin Danny disappeared. Banks started getting robbed again. It seemed Cousin Danny might be gunning for the record.
Smith’s Blessed Are the Bank Robbers is the wild, and wildly entertaining, story of an all-American anti-hero. It’s a tale of bank robberies, art and jewel heists, high-speed chases, fake identities, encrypted Swiss email accounts, jilted lovers, and the dark side of an evangelical family (and it wasn’t just Danny; an uncle was mixed up with the mujahideen). It’s a book about what it means to live inside the church and outside the law.
Some of the material in this book comes straight from Courson himself—emails while he was a fugitive and writing he did while in prison to describe his career.
Other Bank Robbers
Scattered throughout are descriptions of other prodigious bank robbers, their streaks, and their methods. Most of these are pretty interesting and probably worth a book themselves. It’s not my typical genre, but there are a couple of these that I’d jump on.
So, what did I think about Blessed Are the Bank Robbers?
Well, it wasn’t bad. A lot of it was pretty entertaining and well-written. Significant portions of it were a blast and really sucked me in. But for every section of the book that sang, there was a section or more that fell flat. I had high hopes for this one and none of them were met.
This felt like the journalism surrounding Capone and the like during their heyday—it was a celebration of Courson’s crimes. The acknowledgment that his crimes caused actual harm came from Courson himself in a throwaway comment. Sure, it’s exciting to read about this kind of crime and Courson is clearly a charismatic figure. But celebrating him like this left a bad taste in my mouth. Then sending emails back and forth with him while he’s “on the lam”* and daydreaming about following in his footsteps? Were Smith a starry-eyed adolescent, I could accept it, but in a father? It discredited the author in my eyes (it would’ve taken a 2-sentence paragraph where he acknowledged the problem with it).
* I did appreciate getting the etymology of that phrase.
I don’t think Smith did an effective job of exploring the link between Courson’s Calvary Chapel upbringing and his turning to a life in crime—it’s there if you look for it (and make some assumptions), but if you’re going to put “Evangelical” in the subtitle, you need to expand on this.
There was a lot of promise in the premise, some entertaining/informational moments, and it was an easy read—but ultimately, it was a letdown. I fully expect that others won’t stumble over the things I did (some of which are above), and I don’t know that I would argue with them.
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