Word: trained
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...TRAIN ROBBERS by Piers Paul Read; Lippincott; 320 pages...
...Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up." Says the Guinness Book of World Records: "The greatest recorded train robbery occurred between 3:03 a.m. and 3:27 a.m. on August 8, 1963, when a General Post Office mail train from Glasgow, Scotland, was ambushed at Sears Crossing and robbed at Bridego Bridge at Mentmore, near Cheddington, Buckinghamshire, England. The gang escaped with about 120 mailbags containing ?2,631,784 worth of bank notes being taken to London for pulping. Only ? 343,448 had been recovered by December...
There have been a number of books about this famous "tickle," the London underworld's euphemism for unlawfully separating the owner from his property. Malcolm Fewtrell, the Buckinghamshire detective superintendent assigned to the case, was the first to title his account of the crime The Train Robbers. The principal distinction of Piers Paul Read's similarly named book is that its author is also a record holder of sorts. In 1974 the paperback rights to Alive, his bestseller about the Andes plane crash victims who survived on protein obtained from their dead comrades, sold for $1.2 million...
...First, there are the project's origins, described in Read's introduction: "Toward the end of April, 1976, a tall, well-dressed South African walked into the offices of the London publishers W.H. Allen and Co. and offered to sell them the confessions of the celebrated Great Train Robbers ... Reluctant to sign up the thieves without an author to write their story, the publishers invited me to come to London and discuss the project with all concerned." Out of the meeting, attended by seven of the original 15 bandits, came a startling claim: the so-called crime...
...connection was another tickle, a hoax designed to hook the publisher. Read then exits rather sheepishly with the classic copout, "Let each reader decide upon its veracity for himself." In an era of recycled journalism and package publishers who may be soon calling books "entertainment systems," everybody aboard The Train Robbers appears to have it both ways. Even the reader, who can spook himself with the thought that the SS rides again or ignore this specter and still get a doughty account of a daring exploit...