Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits by John M. Merriman

Victor and Rirette found hope in radical politics, Bonnot and his gang in crime, but none could escape the full might of the French military. Their Paris was a vast city of impoverished workers who lived near bleak canals, cemeteries, and empty lots around smoky factories. The couple and their anarchist friends occupied a world far apart from the opulent Paris of the Champs-Élysées.

Victor Kibaltchiche and Rirette Maîtrejean met and fell in love at an anarchist rally, and together ran the radical Parisian newspaper L'Anarchie, which covered the Bonnot Gang with great sympathy. At the heart of the book are two anarchist idealists who wanted to find an alternative to Bonnot's crimes and the French government's unchecked violence. In Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits, John Merriman describes the Bonnot Gang's murderous tear and the Parisian police force's botched efforts to stop them. With guns blazing, the Bonnot Gang robbed banks and wealthy Parisians and killed anyone who got in their way in spectacularly cinematic fashion-all in the name of their particular brand of anarchism. Before Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger, the Bonnot Gang, led by the coarse Jules Bonnot, captured the minds of a nation with their Robin Hood-esque capers.

That year, Paris was gripped by a violent crime streak that obsessed and frightened its citizens. The Belle Époque was well underway, yet it was not without incident. And the Parisian elites were mad about their fancy new cars. Electricity had transformed the City of Lights. Picasso, Debussy, and Proust were revolutionizing art, music, and literature.

Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits by John M. Merriman