The Default World by Naomi Kanakia

June 1, 2025

The Default World by Naomi Kanakia

Jhanvi is a trans woman living in San Francisco. Unfortunately she is very masculine looking: over six feet tall, broad shouldered, muscular, swarthy, with a prominent jaw and brow bone. Jhanvi knows she is going to need some serious surgery and drug therapy in order to successfully present as a woman. She learns that some major tech companies have insurance that will cover gender correction surgery, so she starts hatching a scheme to find someone to marry her. Some of her San Francisco acquaintances live in a communal house known as the Fun Haus and earn a lot of money, so her backup plan is to figure out a way to con them out of some of it.

The main character is a transgendered woman who wants to complete her transition who is unfortunately morally bankrupt. That doesn't have anything to do with her gender or her sexuality - she's just a shady person who will use anyone. She doesn't have a job (because even though she graduated from Stanford, working is boring), so she decides to try to scam one of her acquaintances (who graduated from Stanford with her, have good well-paying jobs, and work long hours) into marrying her for their medical insurance - she doesn't care if it's a man or a woman. The people she's living with aren't much better. Unnecessarily complicated, with unsympathetic characters. I did feel sorry for Jhanvi at a few points, like when she catches sight of herself in a mirror and thinks, I'm a man in a dress, I look like a man in a dress. BTW, the default world is what the rest of us call the real world. It's the people and place where, if you need help, people actually help you, stand by you, and support you. They are your real family and community - but there are rules, values, morals, principles, and goals attached to them.. Not sure who if anyone I would recommend this to.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Bruce Jenner who became Caitlyn Jenner, one of the best known trans women in the world

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

February 21, 2023

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

A collection of articles about modern crooks and con men that the author research and interviewed in his work as an investigative journalist. As in any such collection, some were fascinating, others not so much.

Confidence by Rafael Frumkin

February 13, 2023

Confidence by Rafael Frumkin

Ezra and Orson are best friends and sometime lovers, both growing up poor, who meet as baby criminals at Last Chance Camp, one stop before juvie. Ezra has his first experience with con games when he's ten, and he and his mother stop at a tent revival meeting, and his mother cons the church goers. He and Orson run their first scam together on a site like Etsy, then get into a bigger con game involving Bitcoin, because most people don't actually understand what it is or how to use it. Their target market is the ultra-rich, "the man," the blood suits (as Orson and Ezra call them), the kind of people who are so rich they have no idea what real life is like and don't bother to closely research the schemes of con men like Orson and Ezra. They are also the kind of people that the rest of us secretly enjoy watching get swindled because they deserve it and they can afford it. What does it matter if they get taken for a little money? But then the boys come up with an idea for a much bigger scam, a (phony) behavior altering device/program that takes off when they market it to the wives of ultra-rich men. They find themselves riding a billion dollar wave until it comes crashing down. Who needs the American Dream, these guys have the American Con.

Pyramid or Ponzi schemes have been around for a long time, as have con artists. Famous con artists include P. T. Barnum, L. Ron Hubbard, and Donald Trump, and Ezra and Orson aspire to join their ranks. The key to a successful con is offering something that is too good to be true, and making it a little obscure so that people don't understand exactly what they are buying. Orson and Ezra are opposites: Ezra is short, nerdy, brilliant, introverted and addicted to the internet; Orson is movie star handsome, charismatic, charming, and a born salesman. Ezra literally has tunnel vision, suffering from glaucoma and progressively poor eyesight, and he has a hard time seeing Orson for who he really is. Greed is always their driving force, but their real problems begin when Orson starts believing the BS that they are selling. 

Mel Brooks made a movie called The Producers, about a Broadway producer who concocts a scheme to produce the worst play ever written and make a killing by over-selling shares to investors (The Twelve Chairs is another Brooks film about con artists). 

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

The Producers

The Queen by Josh Levin

October 15, 2022

The Queen by Josh Levin

Linda Taylor (not her real name) was a mysterious African American woman who lived on Chicago's South Side. She had mink coats, drove a new Cadillac, wore designer clothes, and owned expensive jewelry. She was married multiple times and at various times, reported having as many as eight children. She used multiple aliases. Even her age and her race were uncertain. When she reported a robbery at her south side home (claiming a burglar had stolen her refrigerator and removed it from the house through a small kitchen window), the detective assigned to the case recognized her as a woman he had arrested for welfare fraud in Michigan. As he investigated her claims, he realized that Taylor used a number of aliases to commit a variety of crimes in several states, including welfare fraud, kidnapping, con games, and possibly murder. The Chicago Tribune dubbed her the welfare queen and the title was picked up by then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, who made her story a national legend and a disgrace.

This is an unusual narrative about a shadowy figure who learned how to work the system and not get caught. Part of the reason behind her success as a con artist was the reluctance of government agencies and law enforcement to investigate. It took a crusading journalist at the Chicago Tribune to bring the case to the public's attention. This is an issue that really pisses off working people: our tax dollars going to people who don't work, smoke cigarettes, drink liquor, party, gamble, and frequently have a large number of children. While there are certainly recipients who fall into that category, many welfare recipients are going through a bad time and need help to temporarily bridge the gap until they can get back on their feet. The author is sympathetic to Linda and welfare recipients in general, but Linda was definitely a con artist of the first rank.

Linda Taylor (center) with her lawyer and (I think) her daughter Sandra

Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

December 30, 2021

Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Stan Carlisle is a young carnival worker, on his way up in the world. He hooks up with Zeena, another carnival worker who has a mind reading act, and learns how to fool an audience. He leaves the carnival with Molly, a girl who has an act with the circus freak show, and together they develop a mind-reading stage act that does reasonably well. When he realizes how much money people will pay to contact their loved ones in the next world, Stan morphs into the Reverend Stanton Carlisle, spiritualist and medium. His church contacts lead him to an unscrupulous psychologist named Lilith, who helps him gain access to wealthy and powerful men. But he takes his act one step too far and his life begins to spiral out of control, until it comes full circle and he returns to the carnival life where the story began.

Dark, disturbing, atmospheric, bleak, with great characters. The 2021 movie adaptation is well done.

Carnival sideshow

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

January 21, 2020

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

For Elmer Gantry, religion is strictly a racket.  During his college years studying law (and barely passing his classes), he realizes that his voice is his most powerful tool (or weapon).  After raising hell in college, getting kicked out of the seminary, and working as a successful traveling salesman, Elmer meets up with a charismatic woman evangelist, Sister Sharon Falconer, and becomes an insincere, hypocritical, yet very effective evangelist, treating it like just another scam he can use to fool the rubes.

In stark contrast to Elmer is his seminary classmate Frank Shallard.  Not only does Frank strive to live a godly life, he has doubts about his faith, his calling, and the existence of God almost from his seminary days.  He contemplates a different calling for himself, wanting to explore aspects of current thought such as evolution.  Frank is scandalized by Elmer’s actions, especially his inflammatory preaching.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to read a classic every month.  I started with Lewis’ Elmer Gantry because it happened to be available through the library.  Sinclair Lewis’ novel satirizes religion, evangelism, and small town attitudes long before the days and downfall of televangelists like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (couldn’t you just see Elmer as a televangelist?).  Elmer Gantry isn’t technically historical fiction since it is a story set in the 1920’s and written in the 1920’s.  The novel differs significantly from the film version of the story.

Overall, Elmer is the definition of smarmy, a bull-shitter of the first magnitude.  He is desperately ambitious to BE someone, to be envied and revered, looked up to, a man of wealth and substance, but he doesn’t want to work for it.  The fire scene in the revival tent is a physical embodiment of Elmer’s morals:  he actually climbs over the fallen to get out of the burning tent, not caring that he is stepping on others.  He mistreats his wife and children, looks down on everyone else, lies and cheats.  He is often hurtful to others, even when he thinks he is being funny.  As a pastor, he advocates for a crackdown on vice, while being careful to hide his own adulterous activities.  Elmer Gantry is like a train wreck – he’s awful, but you just can’t look away.

Tiger Shrimp Tango by Tim Dorsey

August 28, 2019

Tiger Shrimp Tango by Tim Dorsey

After watching "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective," Florida-phile Serge A. Storms and his druggie sidekick Coleman decide to become private investigators.  They team up with Mahoney, a noir-ish P.I. who specializes in assisting victims of Internet scams, because of course, Florida is the capitol of scam-dom.  When one of Mahoney's clients, an innocent woman named Brooke, is robbed by scammers on the day of her father's funeral (who was himself scammed by those people pretending to be from the IRS), Serge swings into action and dishes out his own brand of Serge-justice to scammers in need of learning how to be nice to other people.  All while taking in the myriad sights of Florida.

This isn't the strongest title in the series, but it is still has a lot of humor, as well as some creative and gruesome executions - Serge's knowledge and use of science is pretty awesome.  Many of the characters from previous titles in the series reappear in this one, including Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin.  Serge is a lovable psychopath who lives by his own strange code of ethics like any good detective (although unlike most noir detectives, Serge does score with the ladies and is highly resourceful when in need of some fast money).  Coleman is along for the ride, always high, and sometimes spouts unexpected wisdom.  Mahoney is a riot - he talks like a detective right out of Mickey Spillane or Raymond Chandler using tough-guy slang that is largely unintelligible, and he refers to himself in the third person.  Tim Dorsey's series is a refreshing change of pace, like mental sorbet when you've been reading too much literary or historical fiction.  Oliver Wyman reads the audio version and does a great job.