Mad Dog

Kelly has moved beyond the promise of Apalachinok? spok and Protection ; his latest delivers big. Two laconic, supple voices give us different views of John Dillinger's life: one is a third-person account of Dillinger's last 14 months in 1933-1934, while the second comes from an unnamed narrator who joins a Midwest traveling circus after he's been mistaken for the famous fugitive, putting together a ``Dillinger Alive'' act. The book moves seamlessly between the two perspectives (at one point we read more than a page about a bank robbery before realizing it's part of the circus act) and different times (the narrator often speaks to us today). There are some remarkable set pieces: an old Frank James lecturing on brother Jesse; the protracted death of a gang member; the 1973 remembrance of a robbery hostage, a grandmother whose ``slender legs still suggested what a number she must have been, what a dancer.'' And always we're aware of the Depression's terrible effect. The narrator's affair with an aerialist's wife who portrays ``Billie Frechette'' in his act strangely reflects Dillinger's affair with the real Billie, whom the narrator meets a few years later, putting further spin on the book's clever toying with time and reality. The narrator admires the circus elephants who act with ``bored nonchalance,'' as if ``they're putting one over on the suckers.'' But readers get their full money's worth here. (Mar.)