Vesco

Herzog's brilliantly researched story should win honors as one of the year's remarkable biographies. He exposes the amoral brutalities of Wall Street and corporate finagling in this era of mergers, takeovers and junk bonds. He traces the career of legendary Robert Vesco from his youthful formation of an airplane-parts company, ICC, and gimmicky exploitation of his growing ""big money'' reputation through banks in the Bahamas and the Caymans to his big couptaking control of Bernie Cornfield's multi-million dollar Investors Overseas Service at the beginning of the 1970s. By 1973, when the SEC went after him, Vesco had taken flight with some $240-million of IOS funds. His zig-zag life as a fugitive involved sojourns and escapes from the Bahmas and Costa Rica, and Herzog's scenario scarcely misses a beat right up to the remarkable last pagesHerzog's ultimate catching up with a nearlybroken Vesco in Cuba, where he now lives. Herzog is the author of 10 novels and four works of nonfiction. (October 2)