Drake's Fortune: The Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist

Drake's Fortune: The Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist | Richard Rayner | Lively read, great summer reading, airplane reading

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Drake's Fortune: T...

	Drake's Fortune: The Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist Richard Rayner Anchor, 2003 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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His scam was as simple as it was brazen. Before and during the Great Depression, Oscar Hartzell persuaded tens of thousands of Midwesterners to part with millions of dollars to start a legal fund that would see the mythical fortune of Sir Francis Drake restored to his rightful heir. In return for their contributions, donors would get shares in the riches, estimated to be worth $100 billion. The money of course went in the pocket of Hartzell, who transformed himself into a hedonistic English aristocrat even as the folks back home continued to see him as a hero.

As he recounts this amazing tale, Richard Rayner tells the larger history of cons in America. We have always had a soft spot for the crafty or larger-than-life swindler, and with Drake?s Fortune, Rayner offers a delightful portrait of a uniquely American character.

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Fruit of the Archives

This lovely book succeeds for a number of reasons, which I'll gladly explain as follows: Firstly, not just the relationship of character to plot-- which in my opinion is the key ingredient of any successful nonfiction-- but the evolution of the character as the plot; in the case of "Drake's Fortune," the evolution of Oscar Hartzell, madly and finally, into Sir Francis Drake, the Baron of Buckland. The book twists and turns perfectly with Hartzell's deceptions and permutations. Richard Rayner takes us deep inside Hartzell's head in a way rivalled only by Don Delillo's "Libra" and its tortured and confused Oswald. Secondly, Rayner's explanatory digressions-- the history of the con, the history of the 1930s, the psychology of con artists, as well as his own fascinating family and personal (and criminal) history-- are inserted to maximum effect and pacing. It's just a great read. Thirdly, Rayner breaks new and important historiographical ground. Thanks to his work, the Drake Estate and its "donators" will have to be examined by historians of the Depression midwest as a mass social and quasi-religious social movement. This is a great find, and one for which historians should thank Rayner. Like Simon Winchester's "Professor and the Madman," "Drake's Fortune" is based on records found largely in archives-- American and British. These valuable repositories-- the US National Archives and the (UK)Public Records Office-- are, as Rayner notes, where the stories are. They are indeed, and aspiring writers of all stripes-- historians, journalists, screenwriters, and novelists-- should scramble to these facilities posthaste. And finally, this book succeeds because it falls within the tradition of the "New Yorker" magazine's style of seemingly effortless and fine nonfiction writing. A pleasure to read.

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Lively read, great summer reading, airplane reading

The story is clear from the synopsis and other reviews. I'll add that the book is a great read. He's a fine writer, right from the first couple pages you want to keep going. I class this as escapist, interesting, historical, offbeat entertainment. As another reviewer noted, there is relatively little on the "law" of the trial, which is a fairly famous case still occasionally cited (e.g. could he commit fraud by mail from England and be tried in a US court, where the letter arrived?) But that's of little interest except to an attorney, who can look up the case as a supplement to the book. Good reading, and a good offbeat gift book in the nonfiction category. Reyner also wrote two books on California, one light fiction (LA w/o a map) and one on railroad barons & swindles in California history (2008, The Associates).

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Nearly Four Stars

This was an interesting and amusing yarn about one of the great cons perpetrated in America. The author obviously researched this con and others well. However, I found the book to be a bit thin. If there was not more to flesh out the primary tale - and I doubt there were since the author clearly had read everything ever written on it - then I wish Mr. Raynor had included more about the other cons he had researched. Often he went to interviews of other confidence men to substantiate a point. He easily could have added their tales to show just why the Drake Fortune con was so outrageous.

All in all though, worth the read.

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