The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber

After escaping grim Romania for more liberal Hungary in the late '80s Attila Ambrus found that living on his wits wasn't getting him very far. Becoming goalie/janitor for a third-division ice hockey team brought no fortune and little glory: he was the least successful player in the country's least successful squad. His moneymaking ruses -- fur smuggling, gravedigging, roulette -- fared little better. Then a night of whiskey drinking led him to holding a bank up with a plastic gun while wearing a fright wig -- and the Robin Hood of Eastern Europe was born.This is the extraordinary tale of 29 robberies as cackhandedly conducted by Attila and his ice-hockey henchmen as they were investigated by Lajos Varju, the Iron Curtain's answer to Inspector Clouseau. Varju's inspiration is Columbo; he is assisted by a ballet-teacher forensics expert who wears a top hat and tails on the job. Thus for 27 of his heists Attila gets away -- and after a jail breakout still manages a couple more.Stories abound of Eastern Europe slipping off its communist skin and slipping on leopard-skin hotpants, but it's a story like this that really screws in the lightbulbs.In Julian Rubinstein's tale anti-hero Attila is immortalized as the most charming outlaw since the Sundance Kid, and we're all invited to his zany party.

ISBN 0719563046   Pages 336 ISBN13 9780719563041 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 470 Publisher John Murray General Publishing Division   Published in London Imprint John Murray Publishers Ltd   Height (mm) 232 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 154 Publication date 07 Nov 2005   Spine width (mm) 25 DEWEY 364.1552092   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

" 'Punchy, hitarious, and apparently even true... truth can be better than fiction' - Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook. 'A fast-paced and exquisitely detailed true-crime lark' - Outside. 'This stuff just can't be made up' - Maxim. 'An instant classic' - Globe & Mail (Canada). 'Outrageously entortaining' - San Francisco Chronicle. 'One of the quirklest and most riveting narratives. Weirdness has never been so winning' - Elle. 'Rubinstein has found a story of the sort that would make even the most dry-mouthed journalist slobber. Sometimes sad, often hilarious and always absurd, Ambrus's tale microcomsically condenses the politico-historic oddities into one entertaining and fairly tidy narrative. With a keen eye for the ridiculous, fearlessly high-speed prose and an extraordinary wealth of reported detail. Rubinstein conducts the affair like an unusually thoughtful carnival barker.' - New York Times"

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