Name: Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid
ISBN: 9780358067771

Glenn Stout

"A thrilling Jazz Age chronicle of America's first gangster couple, Margaret and Richard Whittemore"--

America's Original Gangster Couple

Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid

Jeff Brown 

3.75 stars. The blurb on the dust jacket was misleading about “America’s First Gangster Couple” — “Before Bonnie and Clyde were Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid”. Chronologically, that is very accurate.

But the book is 95% about the Kid, because as stated in the final Author’s Notes, little was known about Margaret because 1) she didn’t do anything illegal before marrying Richard (left school early to work at the phone company), 2) newspapers at the time, either through sexism or the newness of females being even remotely involved with gangs, very rarely made the news, and 3) in the 20s, a gun moll literally meant being associated with a gangster. So, Bonnie Parker, she was not.

But, thanks to the times, every major city had 8-10 newspapers, so the author culled them into a fairly good story.

Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid America's Original Gangster Couple