Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale, 253 pages

Frank Abagnale dropped out of high school and spent a sizeable chunk of the 1960s on the lam, impersonating everyone from a Pan-Am co-pilot to a prosecuting attorney to a pediatrician while passing fake checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Catch Me If You Can (which was the inspiration for the 2002 movie of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks) is Abagnale's memoir of his life as a charismatic con man, and is just as charming and entertaining as Abagnale himself must have been to all of the marks he scammed.

If this book has any fault, it's in the ending. Those familiar with Abagnale's story know that he eventually was apprehended and became a successful consultant to the FBI on forgery and fraud. This book, however, doesn't go into exactly how that happened, which I'm sure would have been a great story, considering how disliked he was by the FBI agents who were tracking him. Otherwise, though, this was a fun book.