What a book! This thing simmers until it explodes, and when it does—watch out. It’s credited to two authors—James Hopper and Fred R. Bechdolt—but research has led us to agree with H. L. Mencken: Hopper was likely the author, with Bechdolt supplying the facts.

What immediately stands out is Hopper’s lean, stripped-down writing style. There is no fat on this thing: it’s brisk, brash, and brutal. Need more alliteration? It’s also electric, economical, and efficient. We Heathens are big fans of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker series that he penned as Richard Stark, and Hopper feels very much like a precursor—emphasis on the stark. Westlake kicked around in that noir, antihero sandbox made popular by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but this book is proof Hopper was building a sandcastle there long before they arrived—which is to say 9009 was pulp before there was pulp.

At the same time, though, it’s a scathing indictment of the American penal system as it existed at the turn of the 20th century. In their preface, Hopper and Bechdolt make it clear that everything that happens in 9009 is “something which has happened to some convict in some prison some time.” While that statement may sound engineered in order to lend their novel some based-on-fact validity, we Heathens are knee-deep in production on a whole gaggle of autobiographies/prison reform books authored by Donald Lowrie, Thomas Mott Osborne, Ed Morrell, and Jack Black, among others (we’re calling it our Convictions series), and we can emphatically state that when they say it’s based in truth—we believe them. Lowrie’s first book, My Life in Prison, is full to the brim with prison absurdities. Then, Morrell sees his absurdities and raises him several insanities in his own The 25th Man. Jennings, this story’s antagonist, could easily be a real-life character in either of their books.

But, maybe it’s not enough for them to say it’s based on facts and for us to say we believe them. We can hear the challenge now: where’s the proof?

You want proof?
We’ve got proof.

9009 borrows many of its elements from the prison break perpetrated by Harry Tracy (prisoner #4088) and David Merrill (#4089) from the Oregon State Penitentiary on June 9th, 1902. And rather than expound on the similarities and spoil both stories for you, we have included an account of that escape (with images)—as detailed in the book Sensational Prison Escapes From The Oregon State Penitentiary published in 1922 by Prisoner #6435—so you can draw your own conclusions on what is fact and what is fiction.

As for the text, we’ve kept our Heathening to the bare minimum given how modern Hopper’s writing reads as-is. The only modifications we’ve made have been in updating a few words to their current equivalents (e.g. cell-mate is now cellmate, shot-gun is now shotgun, etc.), which we’re pleased to report makes this ripping tale rip faster.

Ready?
Go!

Check out Hopper’s story about his first writings here: Writers on Writing: James Hopper

“It is painfully realistic.” —The New York Times

“Almost too terrible in its realism is the story of a convict ‘9009’ by James Hopper and Fred R. Bechdolt. It is the kind of story which makes the reader on fire against the injustice of justice.” —The Graphic

“Put into commonplace language, without hysteria, it is a protest against the American penal system.” —The Saturday Review

“Very real, very dramatic, and most tragical in its ending.” —The Book News Monthly

“Achieves a bone-chilling effect by consistently using ‘9009’ as the name of the protagonist.” —H. Bruce Franklin, Prison Literature in America

“From cover to cover, a book of horror and grim, relentless realism. A fact-story, 9009 might have been a collaboration of Poe, Hugo, and Oscar Wilde.” —Sunset

“The book is the heaviest blow that has been struck the prison system since Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” —Newark Call

“A story of prison life, authentic as to fact, that will prove a great sensation in its startling revelation of the present management of prisons.” —The Publishers’ Weekly

“A book decidedly out of the ordinary . . . a remarkable story. It is an intricate psychological study of an imprisoned man and an appalling indictment of our prison systems. Aside from the artistic value of the book, the sweep of the facts which it presents is staggering. As has been well said, 9009 is a question which must be answered.” —Janet B. McGovern, The Los Angeles Times

9009