Rook

Rook is a gripping historical crime novel inspired by the real-life bank robber Al Nussbaum. To his wife Lolly, Al is a loving, chess‑obsessed family man; to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, he’s a calculating mastermind whose meticulously planned heists have turned deadly. When a guard is killed and a cop is shot, Al rockets onto the Most Wanted list and is forced to vanish from Buffalo, leaving Lolly to face the fallout as “the bank robber’s wife.” While Al hides under aliases, plotting new scores and a desperate escape plan, Lolly must support their baby, endure FBI pressure, and decide whether loyalty to the man she loves is worth sacrificing her future. Told in taut, alternating perspectives, Rook explores the thin line between devotion and betrayal, and how far a man—and a marriage—will go when the noose starts to tighten.