Odd Man Out
May 26th 2006 12:20
Odd Man Out, the autobiography of Ronald Biggs
So I grabbed this book from one of those bargain book piles I often like to talk about. This one was about $5. It was written by the man himself and it looked like an interesting-enough read to pass my time on the train.
And what a story! I never knew his life ended up being so eventual. First, he robs a train of one of the largest sums of cold hard cash in history. Then he gets caught, goes to gaol, and escapes! Then he has plastic surgery to change his appearance, gets smuggled over to Europe, coasts it over to Australia and eventually ends up in South America where he becomes so loved by the community (and helps their economy a little into the bargain) that they refuse to extradite him back to England, where HRH's Scotland Yard and co. are broiling over with fury to make him pay.
Of course, you can never be sure how true any of it is when the author is a bonafide crook. But Biggs loves to tell a story and is quite humourously self-depreciating. He swears blind that his cut of the heist money pretty much all went on his getting away from England, and he seems to have a genuine lust for life, so he comes as a pretty likeable chap -a ll things considered.
The one who got away.
My geography teacher used to always counter-reply to me that crime certainly didn't pay and that Biggs' crimes cost him his family. I didn't know otherwise at the time but I was glad to find out that this wasn't really true. Biggs actually started a family in South America. Sure, he had family back in England, but he saw them in the end. So he won. I'm sure he wouldn't have lived his life any other way either, so I guess - for some - crime does pay. Take that Mr. Picker!
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