WHERE THE MONEY IS

Fast-paced, hard-boiled, anecdotal account of pursuing bank robbers, by a veteran FBI agent.

Rehder must have kept copious notes about every bank robbery case that came his way during 30 years with the Bureau, because the details from pursuits dating back to 1966 are as fresh as if they happened yesterday. With help from newspaper crime reporter Dillow, he explains why he decided to join the FBI after graduating from law school in St. Louis, how he happened to draw the bank-robbery assignment while a rookie federal officer in Cleveland, and how circumstances enabled him to become perhaps the most knowledgeable law enforcer in the nation after his transfer to LA, which frequently leads the country in the number of bank robberies per year. While devouring Rehder’s accounts of pursuing both amateur and professional perps, readers will become armchair experts themselves; before the end, he covers every imaginable classification of bank heist: the lone robber walking through the front door, sometimes with a loaded gun, sometimes with a pistol-shaped plastic toy; the technologically skilled rings using high-technology tools to drill through the floor from city sewers while the bank is closed for the weekend; the violent gang members financing their neighborhood operations by stealing cash from banks rather than selling drugs. To catch them, Rehder and his FBI colleagues sometimes put their lives on the line. More often, they sit at their desks and use their brains (and experience) to figure out where and when an at-large bank robber might strike next.

Enough rich material here to spawn another night of TV crime drama. Law & Order: Bank Robbery Squad, anyone?