Ballad of the Whiskey Robber

This book jumped out at me at a bookstore one day, and I loved it so deeply that I sought out the author when I learned he lived nearly and we became good friends.

Rubinstein stumbled upon a true crime story most reporters only dream of – that of hard-drinking third-string Hungarian hockey goalie Attila Ambrus, who took up bank robbing and triggered the largest manhunt in post-communist Eastern European history – and then was smart enough to let the story tell itself, bit by incredible bit.

The result is a wild ride through the chaos of post-Cold War Hungary… show more.

If not for the Internet’s ability to locate actual news coverage of events, one could be forgiven for thinking Rubenstein’s tale of Attila Ambrus – a Hungarian hockey player turned pelt smuggler and bank robber – was a fanciful work of pure fiction. That it is indeed a true story makes it all the more delicious as the unlikely tale of an unremarkable player on an unremarkable team becomes a storied folk hero precisely because he’s so bad at breaking the law. You will find yourself rooting for the bumbling protagonist of this true story, perhaps because he is so… show more.