A senior Wall Street Journal
writer, Pollock (Turks and Brahmins) expands on her articles about the FBI's four-month manhunt for scam artist Martin Frankel, engagingly chronicling his journey from mama's boy to corporate mogul to international fugitive. Though he refused to grant Pollock interviews, Frankel comes to life here thanks to her exhaustive research in court documents, newspapers and Frankel's diary, plus interviews with lawyers, government and law enforcement officials, insurance executives, clergy, Frankel's girlfriends and business associates. In the 1980s, he launched the fraudulent Frankel Fund investment firm from his Toledo, Ohio, bedroom. Sued by investors in 1992, he was barred by the SEC from trading stock, but two years later undertook an intricate insurance scam from his new Greenwich, Conn., compound, where he surrounded himself with a "multitude of women." Frankel became an expert on Catholicism and St. Francis of Assisi and established a phony Catholic charity, duping priests with Vatican connections into a $55 million deal. Frankel's fiefdom crumbled in 1999 when insurance regulators became suspicious. After the eccentric embezzler fled, investigators found among his shredded and charred files an intact to-do list including a conspicuous item: "launder money." The final, suspenseful chapters track Frankel's flight across Europe and his 1999 capture at a posh Hamburg hotel. Some readers might recall the fugitive financier from the Court TV documentary House of Cards
or ABC's 20/20, but Pollock's account delivers fresh, in-depth details. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Jan. 22)
Forecast:First serial in the
Wall Street Journal and a 20-city radio satellite tour will help this juicy book win respectable sales.
