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In this corner: the Book. A collection of words that represent ideas when filtered through the lexical systems in a human brain. From clay tablets to bound collections of wood pulp to units of stored data, the book has been around in one format or another for some 3,800 years.

And in this corner: the Movie. A 112-year-old kid born in France to a guy named Lumiere and raised primarily in Hollywood by his uncle Charlie "the Tramp" Chaplin. This young upstart has quickly made a huge impact on society, rapidly becoming the most financially lucrative form of storytelling in the modern world.

Both square off in the ring again as Box Office Prophets presents another round of Book vs. Movie.

The Town

If his biography is to be believed (and, really, why not?) Chuck Hogan was a clerk in a video store in the mid 1990s when his first novel was published. It garnered quite a bit of critical acclaim and sold enough copies to make publishers interested in more of his work. Far from being anything resembling inspired literary genius, Hogan’s debut novel The Standoff was a solidly entertaining thriller involving an FBI agent interrogating a suspect for nine days. In the years that have followed, he’s made a name for himself writing solidly successful commercial stuff - the type of thing that mainstream Hollywood loves. It was only a matter of time before the author (who is currently working on a series of vampire novels with director Guillermo del Toro) finds an adaptation of his work making it to the big screen. A producer took notice of his 2004 crime-romance novel Prince of Thieves—Ben Affleck was approached about the project and the resulting film was released on some 3,500 screens in the U.S. this past weekend. A decade and a half out of working a video store, Hogan’s work makes it to the big screen. A book inspired by Hollywood becomes the subject of a Hollywood crime drama. How do the two compare?

The Book

Set in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, Prince of Thieves tells a gritty, earthbound story about a group of guys who make a great deal of money robbing banks and armored trucks. While there is a fairly large cast of characters, the heart of the story rests on Doug MacRay - a man who once had a promising career ahead of him as a pro hockey player. He’s falling for Claire 0 a woman who works at a bank that Doug and his friends hold-up at the beginning of the story. She was blindfolded for a portion of the caper and Doug was wearing a mask, but does she know more about him than she’s letting-on? And what about the FBI agent who Claire’s been hanging out with since the robbery?

The novel swings back and forth between the working-class crime drama and a somewhat endearingly complicated romantic connection between Claire and Doug. The balance between the two ends of the story are mirrored in an equally balanced thematic aesthetic. One the one hand, this is a very realistic story that delivers more than enough detail to solidly establish a look and feel of the Boston setting. On the other end, we’re dealing with working class people who have chosen a dangerous, illegal pastime that also nets them quite a bit of cash. The narrative rests somewhere between art and grit, tying the two together with a agreeable degree of style and poise.

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