In his 2006 book The Desperate Ones, Guelph, Ontario, author Edward Butts chronicled the exploits of some famous – and some not-so-famous – Canadian criminals of years gone by. With his follow-up, Running with Dillinger, Butts returns to the world of gangsters, train robbers, con men, and other inhabitants of the Canadian underworld.

In the titular chapter, Butts tells the story of John “Red” Hamilton, a native of tiny Byng Inlet, Ontario, a key member of the gang headed by John Dillinger, one of the most notorious criminals of the 1930s. Butts also combs the archives for stories about such obscure Canuck underworld figures as the Power Gang of Newfoundland; Ontarian Edward “Wyoming” McMullen, an associate of the dreaded Norman “Red” Ryan; and the Canadian gangs at the centre of Toronto’s Great Train Robbery in 1928 and the Chatham train robbery of the same year.

Because most of the criminals and crimes Butts covers will be relatively obscure even to diehard Canadian history buffs, the book benefits from a heavy dose of novelty. And Butts’ approach of combining examinations of the crimes with the subsequent police investigations and trials gives some excellent context to the various robberies and murders without glorifying the crimes themselves.

This carefully researched work will appeal to fans of Canadian true crime who have enjoyed such books as Adrian Humphreys’ The Enforcer and Antonio Nicaso’s Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada’s Most Notorious Bootlegger.