After escaping grim Romania for more liberal Hungary in the late '80s Attila Ambrus found that living on his wits wasn't getting him very far. Becoming goalie/janitor for a third-division ice hockey team brought no fortune and little glory: he was the least successful player in the country's least successful squad. His moneymaking ruses -- fur smuggling, gravedigging, roulette -- fared little better. Then a night of whiskey drinking led him to holding a bank up with a plastic gun while wearing a fright wig -- and the Robin Hood of Eastern Europe was born.This is the extraordinary tale of 29 robberies as cackhandedly conducted by Attila and his ice-hockey henchmen as they were investigated by Lajos Varju, the Iron Curtain's answer to Inspector Clouseau. Varju's inspiration is Columbo; he is assisted by a ballet-teacher forensics expert who wears a top hat and tails on the job. Thus for 27 of his heists Attila gets away -- and after a jail breakout still manages a couple more.Stories abound of Eastern Europe slipping off its communist skin and slipping on leopard-skin hotpants, but it's a story like this that really screws in the lightbulbs.In Julian Rubinstein's tale anti-hero Attila is immortalized as the most charming outlaw since the Sundance Kid, and we're all invited to his zany party.
