Shot all to hell Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the wild west's greatest escape

Two books recount the criminal careers of Frank and Jesse James. THE LOST CAUSE The Trials of Frank and Jesse James By James P. Muehlberger Illustrated. 255 pp. Westholme Publishing. $24.95. SHOT ALL TO HELL Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West's Greatest Escape By Mark Lee Gardner Illustrated. 309 pp. William Morrow/ HarperCollins Publishers. $27.99. JESSE JAMES, the young Confederate guerrilla turned outlaw, rose to fame and descended into infamy in less than two decades - from the mid-1860s to his death in 1882 - in the crucible of a frontier struggling to establish law and order, in circumstances that birthed the very notion of the Wild West. He, along with his older brother, Frank, crossed the belly of the continent as a bank and train robber wanted in several counties and states, a criminal entrepreneur and celebrity who used contemporary media skillfully to build a legacy among common people - styling himself as a Robin Hood-like gentleman bandit who was on their side, against the ham-handed (or corrupt) political establishment. Two narratives of parallel interest and construction - "The Lost Cause," by James P. Muehlberger, which concentrates on the justice system's pursuit of the Jameses; and "Shot All to Hell," by Mark Lee Gardner, which zeros in on a single, chaotic bank robbery and subsequent chase - recount the oft-told tale of the brothers and their gang, from the bloody days of disunion on the Missouri-Kansas frontier to Frank's trial and Jesse's end with a bullet in his skull. Both books read like extended episodes of "Law & Order," set in the Midwest, in the years immediately after the Civil War. Both provide detailed accountings of Jesse's and his fellows' movements. And both are equal parts violent melodrama and meticulous procedural, wrapped in vivid packages with enough bloody action to engage readers enthralled by tales of good versus evil. The James brothers were born of Kentucky stock transplanted to Missouri, as were many of the settlers in the fertile Missouri River bottomland that spawned wide-open towns like Independence, Gallatin, Liberty, St. Joseph and West Port (later annexed by Kansas City). A good deal of those who founded farms and communities there were slaveholders, which made the northern territory along the Missouri-Kansas border an enclave of Southern sympathy. During the Civil War, Missouri was divided. After the conflict ended, the victors sought to integrate the state fully into the Union. But the defeated fought efforts at reconstruction and reconciliation through political and extralegal means, including armed resistance, assassinations, robberies and unrest just short of outright rebellion. Jesse James gained some notoriety as a teenage guerrilla and bushwhacker. His brother rode with William Quantrill in brutal raids on the Kansas towns dividing slave from free territory, including an attack on Lawrence on Aug. 21, 1863, in which more than 200 men and boys were massacred. Gardner's book introduces the brothers at the start of their prolonged crime spree, but the heart of his story is the 1876 Northfield, Minn., raid and its aftermath, which he depicts in rollicking style. The messy robbery, which lasted all of 10 minutes, teamed the experienced James boys with the tough and charismatic Youngers, and resulted in the deaths of both outlaws and innocents. Jesse James, after several more robberies, was cornered in his rented home in St. Joseph, in April 1882, and assassinated. He was 34. Six months later, Frank surrendered in Jefferson City, Mo., and the next year was put on trial in Gallatin. Called the "Trial of the Century," State of Missouri v. Frank James was a mega-media event and a landmark in Missouri jurisprudence that involved the participation of some of the state's most important legal talent. For "The Lost Cause," Muehlberger, a practicing lawyer, pored through legal files that no one else had examined for over a century. He superbly describes the trial and its personalities, building suspense and revealing much about the time, the character of the place and the personality of Frank James. He also submits new evidence that puts a distinctly different spin on the brothers' motives and exploits. AFTER FRANK JAMES was acquitted - "the jury," Muehlberger writes, was so sympathetic to him and "indignant at the state for prosecuting a man they regarded as the last returning soldier of the Confederate cause that no amount of evidence would have convinced them to convict" - he went on to a prosperous life before dying in 1915, at age 72. His admirers "celebrated the legend of the noble guerrilla, a farm boy forced to fight to protect friend and family from Northern domination," Muehlberger observes. "Having been a symbol of this myth, it is perhaps fitting that Frank James became its beneficiary during his trial" - even as Jesse became a victim of his own myth and criminal past, dying at the hands of a killer supposedly paid by the state of Missouri to murder him. Indeed, the James boys stood tall at the end of things, their stories presaging a new century's preoccupations and inventions: media-driven celebrity and the romanticism of the "public enemy" who reveled in the hero worship while lightening the wallets of those in power. Jesse James paid a big price but achieved the ultimate victory, at least in the public relations battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. GREG TOBIN has written several books about the American West, including the novel "Prairie."