24 March: Bonnie and Clyde

24 March 1909 was the birthdate of bank robber Clyde Barrow, partner of Bonnie Parker. 10 things you might not know about Bonnie and Clyde.

1. It's not known for sure how they first met. Different members of Bonnie's family told different stories. Some say they met at a party while others say they met when Clyde visited a mutual friend. It does seem to be agreed, however, that they fell in love at first sight.
2. Clyde's first arrest was for failing to return a rental car; his second was for being in possession of a truckload of stolen Turkeys.
3. They are usually portrayed as specialising in robbing banks, but in fact, it was far more common for them to rob small shops and petrol stations. Barrow's gang carried out less than 15 bank robberies in total and Bonnie wasn't always even involved. Clyde would go in with a male accomplice while Bonnie's role, if she even had one, would be driving the getaway car. When Bonnie and Clyde were working alone, robbing banks was too high risk for relatively little return.
4. Both of them had very different career aspirations growing up. Clyde could play Guitar and taught himself to play the Saxophone, and might have been on track for a career in music had his older brother and his friends not lured him into a life of crime. Bonnie wanted to be a movie star and took part in talent shows, telling friends her name would be in lights some day.
5. They both limped. In Clyde's case it was as a result of a self-inflicted injury while in prison in the hope that he might be transferred to a less brutal jail. He cut off two of his toes with an axe (or possibly asked another inmate to do it). Six days later, he was released on parole. Not only did he walk with a limp but he couldn't wear shoes when driving. In Bonnie's case it was a car accident. Clyde was driving too fast and crashed into a barricade. Battery acid leaked out of the wrecked car onto Bonnie's leg, giving her third degree burns. Her injury affected her mobility to the extent that Clyde sometimes had to carry her.
6. Bonnie was married to another man. She'd married Roy Thornton when she was 16, having met him at school. She saw marriage as a way out of the dead end jobs she would otherwise have been destined for. Roy wasn't a good husband, though. He was a petty thief, who cheated on her and abused her. She described him as "a roaming husband with a roaming mind". He was sentenced to five years in prison and it was while he was in there that Bonnie and Clyde's own crime spree took place - Roy was still in prison when he heard of her death. The fact that she was a wanted criminal in her own right prevented Bonnie from seeking a divorce, and she was still wearing her Wedding ring when she died.
7. They were portrayed as ruthless killers and are known to hive killed about 12 people during their crime spree. However, despite being photographed holding a gun with a cigar in her mouth, surviving gang members said Bonnie had never fired a gun and didn't smoke - she was merely Clyde's willing accomplice. Even Clyde is said to have only killed when there was no other option, when the cops had them cornered. If at all possible, they'd let their hostages go. One story related that they kidnapped one cop but let him go along the road and even gave him money for his fare home before fleeing.
8. They both had tattoos. Bonnie had one on her right thigh, interlocking hearts with her name and her husband's. Clyde had "USN" tattooed on his left arm, because he'd intended to join the US Navy when he was a teen. However, he was rejected on medical grounds.
9. Bonnie wrote poetry. She'd been good at creative writing and poetry at school and returned to this hobby while serving a prison sentence for a failed hardware store robbery in 1932. She wrote ten poems and called the collection Poetry from Life's Other Side. One of the poems was called The Story of Suicide Sal, which told of a country girl following her boyfriend into a life of crime. Shortly before she died, she wrote another, called The Trail's End, which finished with the verse "Some day they'll go down together; And they'll bury them side by side, To a few it'll be grief- To the law a relief- But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde."
10. On 23 May 1934 their spree, and their lives, came to an end when a posse ambushed the couple in their stolen car in Louisiana. They pumped the car full of bullets, killing them both. Clyde's saxophone was in the car, which a judge insisted should be returned to its rightful owner, a Ruth Warren from Texas. Needless to say, she could no longer drive it and sold it to a man who toured fairgrounds giving lectures warning people about the consequences of crime. Today, it is on display in the lobby of a casino near Las Vegas. As Bonnie and Clyde lay dead in the car, souvenir hunters swarmed onto the scene. One tried to cut off Clyde's ear and another his finger but police intervened and stopped them. Someone did manage to cut off locks of Bonnie's hair and part of her dress, though. Despite Bonnie's poetic prediction that they'd be buried side by side, they lie in separate graves. Bonnie's mother, who disapproved of their relationship, made sure of that and had her buried in a different cemetery.

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The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.

Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...

Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.

Short story collections

Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny.