"Parker is very popular in prison," wrote 1960s-era bank robber Al Nussbaum. "Despite the fact that almost everyone can find some nit to pick with the criminal methods he describes, the strength of the Parker character overshadows any small flaws." Nussbaum was referring to the hardboiled crime series by Richard Stark (a pseudonym of mystery writer Donald Westlake) featuring a professional heister named Parker—no first name, thankyouverymuch. The Parker novels are crisp, cold, suspenseful—and apparently, inspirational. "I’ve not only read them," wrote Nussbaum, "I’ve even tried to live a couple of them."

Of course, Nussbaum wasn’t your average crime buff—he had a vested interest in the topic. But what might modern-day Nussbaums be reading in the slammer these days?

Blood Money (1927) by Dashiell Hammett. The hero of this short novel—and many other short stories, first published in Black Mask magazine during the 1920s—is a balding, middle aged operative who works for the Continental Detective Agency (think: Pinkerton Agency). In Blood Money—which is actually two related novellas, "The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money"—the Continental Op tangles with a criminal mastermind named Popadopalous who organizes an audacious double-bank heist perpetrated by no less than 150 (!) criminals. The $106,000 refers not to the take from the robbery, but rather the bounty on Popadopalous's head. Hammett's seminal hardboiled novel Red Harvest also features a bank robbery as a subplot.

Thieves Like Us (1937) by Edward Anderson. Three escaped convicts resume their careers as bank robbers in Oklahoma, but things become complicated when the youngest bandit, Bowie A. Bowers, falls in love with a cousin of one of the older robbers and decides to make a run at the straight life. Anderson got the idea for the novel after interviewing his cousin Roy Johnson, who was in the Huntsville State Penitentiary for armed robbery; the original title was They’re Thieves Like Us. The novel was later filmed as Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night (1949) and Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us (1974), starring Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall.

Hell Hath No Fury (1953) by Charles Williams. A drifter named Madox wanders into a small town and finds work at a used car lot, but is just biding his time until he can devise the perfect bank robbery by setting diversion fires all over town. But someone’s already set a fire for Madox: the used car lot owner’s wife. In 1990, Hell was turned into a Dennis Hopper-directed movie called The Hot Spot starring Don Johnson (as Madox), and Virginia Madsen (as the boss’s wife, Dolly Harshaw).

The Big Caper (1955) and Steal Big (1960) by Lionel White. White was the king of pulp caper novels—his racetrack robbery thriller, Clean Break, was the basis for Stanley Kubrick's early film noir The Killing. In The Big Caper, White details a complex bank heist, complete with a safecracker, an arsonist, a pair of tough guys, and a phony husband and wife whose job it is to case the bank. But what happens when that couple decides they'd rather live as man and wife for real than pull the bank job? White described another bank heist gone south five years later in Steal Big, where a hardened con named Donovan puts together what he considers the ultimate bank robbing gang—but all of them turn out to be the ultimate collection of sociopathic losers. White has some fun with in-jokes; one Manhattan black market gun dealer operates under the front, "Kubric Novelty Company."

The Getaway (1958) by Jim Thompson. A bank heist perpetrated by a pair of married ex-cons—Doc and Carol McCoy—goes sour, and suddenly a clean getaway is the only thing that matters. Of course, this is a Jim Thompson novel, and in Thompson’s sordid little corner of the universe, nothing is clean or easy. Still, Doc McCoy has a few clever heist techniques up his sleeve. Explains one thug named Rudy early in the novel: "First, [Doc] looks for a bank that ain’t a member of the Federal Reserve System."

"Oh. Oh, I see," says another criminal. "The Feds don’t come in on the case, right, Rudy?"

"Right," says Rudy. "So anyway, he checks that angle, and then he checks on interest rates. If a bank’s paying little or nothing on savings, y’see, it means they got a lot more dough than they can loan out. So that tips Doc off on the most likely prospects, and all he has to do then is check their statements of condition—you’ve seen them printed in the newspapers, haven’t you?"

The Devil Wears Wings (1960) by Harry Whittington. It's a shame that Whittington is largely forgotten among today's mystery readers. Only he could have come up with a bank heist like the one in this book, where an alcoholic WWII vet named Buz Johnson is recruited by a bank robber to serve not as the getaway driver, but the getaway pilot. That's right; these heisters plan to abscond with the money via Cessna. Then again, Whittington insisted that this novel was based on a true story. "This botched, bourbon-laced crime was one I wrote for editor Joe Corona at True Detective," wrote Whittington. "But I could not get this tragic-comedy out of my mind, so I structured the true events enough to give them form, a beginning, middle, end and desired emotional effect."

The Name of the Game is Death (1962) and One Endless Hour (1969) by Dan J. Marlowe. These two books are the Godfather and Godfather II of bank robber novels. Earl Drake successfully knocks over a jug in Phoenix, but catches a bullet in his upper left arm during the getaway. While he recovers, Drake entrusts the loot to his partner, who lams out for Florida, and who promises to send Drake some money every week. For a while, the money arrives right on schedule. Then one day it stops, and Drake sets out for Florida to find out why. It's impossible to say more without ruining the plot; needless to say, Drake has a hell of time trying to recover his loot. And just when you think the ending leaves Drake no possible escape, along comes One Endless Hour, which picks up exactly where Death leaves off and manages to equal—if not surpass, in some scenes—the original.

Marlowe later turned Drake into a series character ("The Man With Nobody’s Face"), but in novels like Operation: Flashpoint and Operation: Drumfire he stopped acting like a ruthless bank robber and became more of a Matt Helm-like secret agent. Still, Marlowe’s later missteps take nothing away from the brutal one-two punch of the originals.

The Sour Lemon Score (1969), by Richard Stark. Even though Sour Lemon is professional thief Parker's 12th novel appearance, this is the first time we actually see him robbing a bank. (The previous eleven novels focused on payroll, jewel, and other assorted heists.) Everything goes smoothly enough when Parker and three others hit the Laurel Avenue Branch of the Merchants and Farmers Trust Bank. But the take is not quite what the group expected—a measly $33,000—and suddenly, one gang member gets greedy and pulls a double-cross. In many ways, this novel is a flashback to the very first Parker novel, The Hunter, in which our anti-hero is screwed out of his share of a payroll heist and left for dead, then goes after the syndicate to get it back. (You may remember the film versions of this novel—Point Blank with Lee Marvin, and Payback with Mel Gibson.) A bank robbery also kicks off Stark's Flashfire (2000), in which Parker firebombs a convenience store in order to distract cops while his accomplices pull a bank heist. Another double-cross is pulled this time, too, but not in the way you might think.

Bank Shot (1972) by Donald Westlake. One reviewer called this book "The Thomas Crown Affair meets the Three Stooges." It’s the second in Westlake’s series about John Dortmunder, a serious-minded yet bumbling thief who decides to gather his crew to steal a bank. That’s right—not the money in the bank, but the bank itself. "I was commuting weekly between New Jersey and New York," recalled Westlake to an interviewer. "There was a bank on Route 23, they were tearing down the old bank and putting up a new bank. It took about a year, and they were operating the bank out of a mobile home next door. And after several months of watching this twice a week driving back and forth, I said, ‘Wait a minute. An enterprising guy could back a truck up to that thing and drive the bank away.’"

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972) by George V. Higgins. Eddie Coyle is a small-time crook supplying pistols to a bank robber named Jimmy Scalisi. But Eddie’s also being squeezed by cops to offer up some underworld dirt, and Coyle, with a wife and three kids to support, has some tough decisions to make. Higgins’ first (and arguably best) novel is a masterwork of gutter-tough dialogue, at its best when two characters are simply sitting around a table, talking business—or, for that matter, being held up. "It’s not all unusual," says a bank manager who’s fallen victim to a Scalisi heist. "I’ve been in this business for thirty-six years. I’ve been held up, this is the fourth time. It’s been my experience that people like this’re generally telling the truth. They want to the money. They don’t want to hurt us. If we can keep calm, we'll be all right."

Bank Job (1974) by Robert L. Pike. Lieutenant Jim Reardon is called in to solve a grisly bank heist in which a San Francisco cop was gunned down. The bandits steal away with a quarter of a million bucks in small, unmarked bills—but they also leave behind some interesting videotaped evidence, which starts Reardon on a dizzying manhunt. Pike, a joking pseudonym of writer Robert Fish, also wrote Mute Witness, which was the basis of the Steven McQueen cop thriller Bullitt.

Let's Hear it for the Deaf Man (1973) by Ed McBain. McBain's popular 87th Precinct series, set in the fiction city of Isola (read: Manhattan), occasionally features a Moriarity-like villain dubbed "the Deaf Man" who loves sparring with the detectives. In this installment, the Deaf Man tells Detective Steve Carella that he's going to steal $500,000 on the last day of April—with Carella’s help. Then, the Deaf Man starts mailing clues: A portrait of George Washington. A photo of J. Edgar Hoover. Another photo of an obscure actress. What does it all mean? And can the boys of the 87th figure it out before one bank loses half a million bucks?

Loophole, or How to Rob a Bank (1973) by Robert Pollock. While the other novels on this list may have served as inspiration for real-life bank robbers, Pollock's Loophole definitely did—just ask the French police. "Some French political criminals read the book and used the plan to pull two of the largest bank vault robberies in history, in Nice and Paris," says Pollock. "The Chief of Police in Nice, Albert Moure, confirmed in a press interview the gang got their idea from the book." Which is not surprising, considering that Pollock based Loophole on an actual heist plan cooked up by England’s foremost bank robber. "We did a deal where I paid him a percentage of my possible income from a novel based on the plan," says Pollock, who met the crook while reporting for the Sunday Times. "Then I did extensive research which included going down the London sewer and obtaining photographs of the bank vault locking systems." Meanwhile, his robber friend checked the technical details.

The result was a knockout novel that achieved worldwide acclaim and was later made into a movie starring Albert Finney and Martin Sheen. "My informant took to me to the London premiere in his Jaguar," adds Pollock.

Roses are Red (2000) by James Patterson. Series detective Alex Cross (who has been portrayed by Morgan Freeman in the movies Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider) squares off against The Mastermind, a psychotic jugmarker who seems to be getting his jollies from killing bank employees and their families. Patterson is the king of the ultra-short chapter, making for ultra-readable thrillers. It doesn’t hurt that Patterson seems to have done his bank robbery homework, dropping references to real-life heisters like Joseph Dougherty, Terry Lee Conner, and David Grandstaff.

"The Death of Jack Hamilton" (2001) by Stephen King. Yeah, this list promised novels, but one short story for the road can’t hurt. This humdinger, which appeared in the December 24-31, 2001 issue of the New Yorker, details the aftermath of a John Dillinger heist, and King manages to weave a yarn that’s riveting, gory, suspenseful, touching—not to mention true to history. A must-read for Dillinger junkies.