BOOMTOWN: The True Story of the Wickedest Town in Texas, latest social-history story from Pappalardo's searching eye

BOOMTOWN: The True Story of the Wickedest Town in Texas
JOE PAPPALARDO
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The true story of the corrupt and violent town of Borger, Texas in 1927--and the legendary Texas Ranger tasked with taming it.

Texas, 1927.

Just a year after the town of Borger, Texas was founded, the press called it “the wickedest in the state" for good reason. The town, sprung into existence overnight to support the oilfields, had become a lawless haven for bootleggers, pimps and gamblers, run by a crooked city hall.

That environment attracts some of the most unsavory characters in prohibition America, including a gang of murderous bank robbers who head into Borger to spend their money on booze, gambling and prostitutes. In the span of weeks, the gang kills three law enforcement officers, bringing the worst heat legendary Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer, who led the 1934 posse that tracked down and killed criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. His arrival threatens to break even this hardest boomtown in America--if it doesn't kill him first.

What follows is one of the most thrilling and violent untold stories from the era of gangsters, lawmen and vice. Author Joe Pappalardo brings to life a town previously lost in the haze of history.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Immersing myself into the chaotic cesspool of greed, interlocking scams, interdependent grifters and graft-grabbers, and general chancers that made up (apparently) the entire population of Borger, Texas, in its heyday was exhausting.

I get the impression it was pretty exhausting for the folks who were busily grabbing everything they wanted, as well as the OTHER folks trying to catch them in at least one explicitly illegal act, as well. I am completely convinced not one of them made old bones. Murdered or just worn out these were some intense alive people.

I wasn't so much involved in the read as I was sucked along in the story's slipstream, wondering who the hell this woman was or why that lawman's name rang a bell...turns out two chapters back he was doin' the nasty with another guy's wife...until nothing made a whole lot of linear sense.

Normally I'm a stickler for linear sense in a history story. This one, not so much. It's a social history for one thing. It's footnoted to a fare-thee-well for another. Y'all killjoys can do a timeline by following those, if it's that important to you. I got a far more interesting ride from sitting in my seat and letting Author Pappalardo direct my attention where he wanted me to look than I would've in a more traditionally structured narrative.

I can't think of a much more timely topic to read about than a bunch of greedy sociopaths in charge of an ugly little burg with too much money and too little to spend it on. It was as edifying in the 1920s as it is now (not at all, in other words) and as instructive: Do NOT let greedy people make their own rules. It does not end well for anyone, and only a few ever get the misery they've so richly earned.