Art of Deception: 5 True Crime Books Featuring Forgers, Fraudsters, and Con Artists

The forthcoming novel Lucien involves an artist and an imposter who become involved in selling forgeries. Inspiration for the novel came from a fascination with illusionists who slip between identities to gain access to worlds otherwise beyond reach. One book that illuminates that world is The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, which tells the story of Christian Gerhartsreiter. He reinvented himself through fabricated identities, including as an heir to the Rockefeller fortune. As Clark Rockefeller, he gained admission to the Lotos Club and married a senior partner at McKinsey. His story unraveled after his wife filed for divorce and he abducted his daughter. Another book is Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art.

• The inspiration for the novel came from a long-standing fascination with stories of imposters and illusionists—characters who slip between identities, not to deceive for its own sake, but to find a shape in which they can live, to gain access to worlds otherwise beyond reach.
• Gerhartsreiter arrived in the United States as an obscure and penniless German exchange student and, over the course of decades, reinvented himself through a succession of fabricated identities—first as a British aristocrat, and later as a supposed heir to the Rockefeller fortune.
• As “Clark Rockefeller,” he gained admission to the Lotos Club, whose past members include Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie and William Randolph Hearst, and married a senior partner at McKinsey.

Source: Crime Reads  | 
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