About this item
In 1919, Texas rancher J. Frank Norfleet lost everything he had in a stock market swindle. He did what many other marks did—he went home, borrowed more money from his family, and returned for another round of swindling. Only after he lost that second fortune did he reclaim control of his story. Instead of crawling back home in shame, he vowed to hunt down the five men who had conned him. Armed with a revolver and a suitcase full of disguises, Norfleet crisscrossed the country from Texas to Florida to California to Colorado, posing as a country hick and allowing himself to be ensnared by confidence men again and again to gather evidence on his enemies. Within four years, Frank Norfleet had become nationally famous for his quest to out-con the con men.
About the Author
Amy Reading grew up in Pennsylvania and Washington state. She worked in scholarly publishing before completing a Ph. D. in American studies at Yale University. Her first book, The Mark Inside, grew out of her dissertation on truth and deception in American autobiography, which contains a chapter on swindlers' memoirs. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children, and can be found at
