Satellite Boy: The International Manhunt for a Master Thief that Launched the Modern Communications Age

This colorful yet unconvincing dual biography mashes together the lives of Canadian bank robber Georges Lemay and American engineer Harold Rosen. True crime writer Amelinckx (Exquisite Wickedness) is at his sharpest recounting Lemay’s brushes with the law (he was suspected in the murders of two criminal associates and the disappearance of his first wife); his masterminding of the 1961 burglary of a branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia in Montreal, which netted $2 million ($19.2 million in today’s money); and his life as a fugitive. While Lemay was tearing through the Montreal underworld, Rosen, an employee at Hughes Aircraft in Culver City, Calif., was fighting to overcome technical, business, and regulatory hurdles to build a geostationary commercial communication satellite that would “provide twenty-four-hour global communications, something never before attempted.” His vision finally became a reality with the launch of the “Early Bird” satellite in 1965. To showcase its capabilities, the Communications Satellite Corporation produced a “splashy television special” that included a brief segment on Lemay, which led to his arrest in Florida. (He escaped from the Dade County Jail in Miami and was recaptured in Las Vegas). Amelinckx lucidly explains the technical aspects and spotlights the boon communication satellites provided to law enforcement agencies, but the link between Lemay and Rosen feels overly circumstantial. In this case, the sum is not greater than its parts. (Mar.)