The Man Who Robbed the Pierre by Ira Berkow

The son took half of the advice: He became a burglar and a cardsharp as well.Ĭomfort perfected his craft the way many young professionals do, through trial and error. The elder Comfort acquired his ample income by gambling (son Bobby was not reared in poverty) and later tried to convince his teenager not to rob but to become a 'card mechanic,' also known as a cheat. It didn`t take the youngster long to begin peeling off a 10-spot for himself. She would ask him to sneak into his father's room while he was sound asleep and take a few bills from the wad stashed under his pillow. 'The Man Who Robbed The Pierre' is about how society tries, often vainly, to deal with its persistently wayward members.Ĭomfort learned to steal at his mother's knee before the age of 10.

It is not simply a profile of the shadowy world of a professional criminal, however. Ira Berkow, a New York Times sports writer, has written a delectable book about a thief that`s full of drama and tension, more exciting than most fictional thrillers. Comfort frequently was gone for long stretches. His Fairport, N.Y., suburban neighbors took him for a family man who worked, they surmised, as a traveling salesman. He was intelligent, quick-witted, affable and cool under fire. In this blend of insightful biography and true crime, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ira Berkow chronicles the story, using first-hand accounts to weave together a fascinating portrait of a criminal and “a corking good cops-and-robbers tale” ( Library Journal).Bobby Comfort was a distinguished thief. Sort of like Robin Hood-except for the part where he kept the loot himself-Comfort masterminded what was, at the time, the most lucrative heist in history, while appearing to his neighbors like an ordinary suburban family man.

Eventually, taking money from the rich was where he excelled. He had taken to crime from a young age with card sharping and petty theft. The answer lay in the leader of the thieves, a man by the name of Bobby Comfort. The police were baffled by how such a large-scale operation could go off so smoothly. In January 1972, men in tuxedos robbed the Pierre, the luxurious Manhattan hotel, and got away with eleven million dollars’ worth of cash and jewelry. It just so happened that he was great at being a criminal. Growing up in Rochester, New York, Bobby Comfort wanted to be a good something. This Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s true account of the thief behind the famed 1972 heist is “an engrossing crime biography . . .

The Man Who Robbed the Pierre by Ira Berkow