This thread, about true crime books of the generally murder and mayhem variety, reminded me that I like a different sort of true crime book. Me, I’m fascinated with grifters and thieves. They’re more suave, more subtle, more romantic than, say, serial killers. More fun. I know the Hollywood sort are rare to nonexistent, but I still enjoy them.
So, since I’ve been floundering for a couple months when it comes to reading, I thought I’d maybe give one of these a try. (It’s either that or pick up a favorite to reread, at this point, though I suppose I’ll bull my way through the newest Temeraire book, despite being rather unhappy with it so far.) I’ve read and enjoyed The Big Con, which, IIRC, helped inspire The Sting. And I’ve read… well, some other stuff. Possibly Whiz Mob, Maurer’s other book, but I’m not entirely sure. A lovely little thing about a jewel thief, too.
So what might you folks recommend? I’d prefer modern to the earlier stuff of **The Big Con/B], but that’s not a hard rule. Do please stick to non-fiction–I might start up a different thread for fiction as well, sometime, but for now I’m looking for real life.
Canadian journalist Andreas Schroeder wrote three entertaining collections about various cons and swindles. I highly recommend them.
Scams, Scandals, and Skulduggery: A Selection of the World’s Most Outrageous Frauds
Cheats, Charlatans, and Chicanery: More Outrageous Tales of Skulduggery
Fakes, Frauds, and Flimflammery: Even More of the World’s Most Outrageous Scams
They’re all out of print but Amazon has cheap used copies.
<Deleted because I misread the OP and was naming fiction - Jim Thompson…>
Um, how about that book…You Can’t Win, by Jack Black (not the actor). Criminal, drifter in SF…
Or Straight Time by Art Pepper. Actually an oral history by the great jazz sax player, but he was a petty criminal and drug addict with time in prison…
I have not read it, but a biography of Titanic Thompson would seem to fall within your request. Not sure if he was a grifter so much as he was someone who always got the best of a proposition.
The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con is fun reading. I listened to it on Audible and very much enjoyed it.
I picked it up after reading Cory Doctorow’s review on BoingBoing, linked to here
When the FBI wanted to set up Abscam, they enlisted Melvin Weinberg, who had been conning and scamming all his life. The Sting Man was the only book I could find on Abscam; it goes into a lot of detail about Weinberg’s career prior to that.
Son of a Grifter. Can’t recall the author (the son of a family of grifters, especially the mother, who tried repeatedly to break out into a normal life) but it was fascinating to me because a good part of the story is set right where I lived, and talked about roads, houses and so forth I knew well.
Kind of an irritating read because it’s one part fury, one part helplessness and one part self-justification.
Darwin Ortiz’s Gambling Scams is about just that (and may be the best book ever written on the subject, Scarne included) but has many vignettes of grifters and hustlers.
There is also a book about Demara with the same title by Robert Crichton, which I enjoyed. Tony Curtis played him in the movie of the same title, which I thought was good.