NORCO '80

Thrilling account of a violent California bank robbery whose damage “keeps rippling out through the generations.”

Houlahan’s debut is remarkable for the exhaustive, sometimes exhausting level of detail he brings to every stage of the story, transforming a pulpy true-crime narrative into a reflection of social transformations and class conflict as the countercultural 1970s faded into the Reagan era. The author argues that the robbers, aimless blue-collar friends who’d dabbled in evangelicalism and doomsday scenarios, “were looking at American society and seeing a house of cards teetering on collapse.” The crime was meant to bankroll plans for a survivalist compound; yet their sense of rage was indicated by the arsenal of assault rifles and improvised explosives. The amateurish robbery devolved into a running firefight with outgunned law enforcement officers which Houlahan documents as an exacting, extended set piece. Following a massive, improvised police response, the criminals fled into nearby wilderness after killing one officer, wounding many others, and being wounded themselves, only to be captured the next day. As one stunned cop observed in the aftermath, “we just got our asses kicked, didn’t we?” The author then goes into the long, chaotic trial. With the three surviving suspects universally loathed and the death penalty in the balance, it became an early media circus marked by “insolence, impertinence, and contemptuous and childish behavior.” Houlahan follows up on the robbery’s long shadow over many officers and civilians who were caught in the melee, delving into subtopics including the evolution of tactics in response to such crimes and departments’ reluctance to offer counseling for PTSD, which compelled some embittered survivors to leave policing. Houlahan’s writing is dense, sometimes colloquial, well-researched, and mostly clear. While his enthusiastic focus on details of the hardscrabble region’s history, characters’ social backgrounds, the botched robbery and its bloody aftermath, the weapons and tactics used by both sides, and finally the long-term changes in policing can occasionally overwhelm, most readers will stay engrossed.

An impressively well-rendered true-crime saga.