The Notorious Reno Gang: The Wild Story of the West's First Brotherhood of Thieves, Assassins, and Train Robbers

by Rachel Dickinson Narrated by Arthur Flavell

Overview

The true story of the world's first robbery of a moving train, and the real origins of the Wild West.



They were the first outlaws to rob a moving train. But from 1864 to 1868, the Reno brothers and their gang of counterfeiters, robbers, burglars, and safecrackers also held the town of Seymour, Indiana, hostage, making a large hotel near the train station their headquarters. When the gang robbed the Adams Express car of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad on the outskirts of Seymour on October 6, 1866, it shocked the world-and made other burgeoning outlaws like Jesse James sit up and take notice. The extraordinary-and extra-legal-efforts to take them out defined the term "frontier justice." From the first report of the robbery, Allan Pinkerton's operatives were on the scene, followed by kidnappings, lynchings, and an extradition from Canada to Indiana that caused an international incident. In the end, ten members of the Reno Gang were hanged, including three of the Reno brothers. And no one was ever charged with the murders.



The Notorious Reno Gang tells the complete story for the first time, revealing how these gangsters, Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, and the little city of Seymour ushered in the Wild West.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 03/27/2017
Evocative prose and rich historical context add depth and broad appeal to this captivating account of the men behind the first-ever robbery of a moving train, their wave of crimes in the 1860s, and their deaths at the hands of vigilantes. Many readers will be unfamiliar with the Reno brothers, but the mark they made on the small community of Seymour, Ind., is significant, Dickinson writes: “Like a boa constrictor, in the mid-19th century the Reno Gang encircled the town and squeezed tighter and tighter for several years until the gang’s activities seemed to threaten the very future of the community.” Dickinson (Falconer on the Edge) opens the story ominously, with a flash-forward as a gang of vigilantes breaks into the jail in a neighboring town in search of the Renos. She then recreates the lives of the Reno brothers, whose criminal careers were shaped by the traumas of the Civil War, which transformed them from “annoying petty thieves” into “the spiders at the center of a five-hundred-mile web of crime.” She thickens the stories with historical context about the changes that railroads brought to the country and the state of American currency at the time. (May)

Lisa Alther

The Reno thugs—‘spiders at the center of a five-hundred-mile web of crime’—filled the moral vacuum following the Civil War with arson, counterfeiting, and train hijacking. Rachel Dickinson has written a compelling narrative of a small town plagued by violence and vice, a microcosm that portrays the issues plaguing many frontier towns in the last half of the nineteenth century. Her prose is spell-binding, and her grasp of the tortured history of American westward settlement is riveting.

Philip Gerard

In this brilliantly authentic account, Rachel Dickinson tells the true story of the original band of bad-boy Wild West outlaws in all their depraved glory—and the relentless man who hunted them down. Vivid, gripping, and a pure delight to read.

Michael Capuzzo

The law and the Pinkertons couldn’t handle the murderous Reno Gang, America’s first train robbers and outlaw band, or the murderous vigilante mobs who fitted them with ‘hempen collars.’ Finally a great detective is on the case: journalist Rachel Dickinson does them all justice in this fascinating, throat-clinching, true-life narrative of Civil-War era history, crime, and justice for all.

Jeff Guinn

With train robberies, murder, equally bloodthirsty criminals and vigilantes, and a cameo by Abe Lincoln, The Notorious Reno Gang is one of the most entertaining books in years—and it’s all true!

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173979872
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/30/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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