CONFESSIONS OF A PROMISCUOUS COUNTERFEITER

by Robert Baudin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 1979

Baudin's bawdy criminal life weaves sex and counterfeiting so smoothly together that you forgive him his sins as readily as he forgives himself. The son of an upright French teacher at Miami University in Ohio (later a professor at Johns Hopkins), Baudin early entered upon a career of total self-satisfaction and hedonism. Skipping school, forging his own report card, shoplifting to pay his way through endless whorehouses, he quickly discovered a passion for older women. During the Depression he quit school and hit the road, sailed about the Far East, sampled sex everywhere. Avoiding World War II, he involved himself in forging gas-ration coupons, was finally fingered by a companion, and spent nearly a year in a federal pen and its neuropsychiatric ward. But now his imagination bloomed with dreams of color-separation photography and he decided to make his own socko $20 bills. For legal reasons (to protect himself from more federal time), he takes off for Australia to ply his new trade. There he prints millions of dollars of smart fakes, selling them in batches to middlemen who peddle them in Europe and the Far East. Meanwhile he's learned to fly and hopes to set himself up in the aerial-photography trade. Setting up a press, cutting plates, running off millions, all is revealed with a da Vinci-like love for how-things-work; you breathe counterfeiting! But there is still more to come--more wild splurges, crazy flights, arrests--with Baudin, at the climax, madly buzzing Sydney while crying over the radio for his exoneration or he'll kill himself. Essentially, he wins! Happy criminality.

Pub Date: April 16, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION