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King Con by Paul Willetts
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King Con

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King Con by Paul Willetts
Hardcover $27.00
Aug 07, 2018 | ISBN 9780451495815

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    Aug 07, 2018 | ISBN 9780451495815

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  • Aug 07, 2018 | ISBN 9780525635482

    688 Minutes

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Praise

“This Jazz Age impostor’s life makes for quite the story, and in King Con, Paul Willetts knows just how to tell it.”
Michael Dirda, Washington Post

“A real story about an absurd, fascistic fraud. (Can’t think why that resonated.)”
—Sam Jordison, The Guardian

“Willetts’s usual blend of deep research and lively storytelling sucks you straight into this picaresque tale of the conman Edgar Laplante, or Chief White Elk as the shameless would-be Native American styled himself while swindling his way across the USA in the Jazz Age. With every twist the story of Laplante’s life grows harder to believe but, unlike the tall tales he told his credulous victims, it is all true.”
—Kieron Pim, Spectator USA, Books of the Year 2018

“A vivid biography of Edgar Laplante… [whose] story, particularly as told by Willetts, is fascinating for a number of reasons—some universal, some unique.”—The Times Literary Supplement

“An amazing book…Paul Willetts has crafted an entertaining and often astounding story of an incredible confidence man…It’s hard to put down.”The Providence Journal

King Con is as engaging, ambitious, and colorful as its shady protagonist… Willetts has dug deep into newspaper archives and investigative files to accomplish what the authorities on two continents failed to do almost a century ago—unravel Laplante’s trail of brazen fraud and deceit.”
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“In King Con, Paul Willetts tells the intricate story of  Laplante’s misadventures and complicated swindles, drawing an expert portrait of both the time period and the man. It’s a useful reminder that America has always belonged to the con artist.”
CrimeReads

“The 1920s was a decade of swindles—and one con artist out tricked them all… this is a story about unscrupulous deception told with a scrupulosity that is admirable.”
The New Statesman

“A minutely detailed study of a man who is enjoyable to read about, but whom no one with a full complement of senses would ever wish to encounter… The author pins down his egregious subject with crisp objectivity.”
—Jonathan Meades, Country Life

“A fast-moving tale of aninveterate scammer, which is every bit as gripping as fiction.”
Saga Magazine

“Willetts’s research is impeccable. He also writes clean, fluid prose and his descriptions of Paris, Milan, Naples and Florence in the 1920s are superb.”
—Winnipeg Free Press


“Even if you are not a fan of biographies, you must read this one, as it is astounding the scams Mr Laplante got up to! A fascinating read.”
—Crimesquad.com

“In this extensively detailed biography, Willetts traces the brazen and bizarre life of Edgar Laplante, an early 20th century drifter and conman extraordinaire… he keeps the narrative alive with the colorful anecdotes from Laplante’s remarkable life.”
Publishers Weekly

“Willetts weaves a fast-paced, intriguing tale. With the rise of identity theft, celebrity worship, and manipulative social media, this sprightly story of a legendary con artist’s outrageous successes becomes a cautionary tale for the digital age.”
—Kirkus Reviews 

“Willetts describes the incredible exploits of Edgar Laplante in wonderful detail using a fun, novelistic style.”
Can’t Make This Up History Podcast

“Paul Willetts’s King Con takes readers on a rollicking ride—a tale of false celebrity and ingenious cons by an inventive Jazz Age grifter that resonate‎ across the decades to this particular moment in America with an unsettling relevance. Readers will be amused, entranced, and, I’m certain, left shaken.” 
—Howard Blum, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Goodnight and In the Enemy’s House

“Amazing, absorbing and phenomenally well-researched, King Con is a compelling story that proves truth is far, far stranger than fiction: a picture of an America so naïve and gullible it’s hard to imagine. Not a page is turned without the reader learning something that astonishes and enthralls.”
—Paul French, New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Peking

“Paul Willets’s King Con is one hell of a rollicking good read. A fabulous tale of one of the all-time great con artists, pulled off with great verve and style. A Jazz Age classic!”  
—Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of Avenue of Spies and The Liberator

King Con is a riveting account of a Jazz Age grifter whose grandiose ruse of a life can only be described as fascinatingly ludicrous! A mesmerizing and enjoyable read.”
—Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist and Eagle & Crane

“A terrific subject, crying out to be turned into a film, and the author has made the most of it in this gripping and well-researched book.”
Andrew Lownie, author of Stalin’s Englishman


“You might justifiably pick up King Con to travel back in time to the ultra-charming Jazz Age, but long after you’ve been pulled into the vortex of this riveting and deliciously strange tale, what will stick with you is the sheer, astonishing audacity of Edgar Laplante’s all-consuming, decade-plus-long grift. An uproarious read.”
—Dave Howard, author of Chasing Phil and Lost Rights

“A story so bizarre—and so compulsively told—that my jaw remained anchored to the floor throughout.”
—John Preston, author of A Very English Scandal

“Think Charles Ponzi was slick? Edgar Laplante, a.k.a. Chief White Elk, was an imposter extraordinaire who hoodwinked audiences and newspaper readers across America and Europe. Paul Willetts spins the rollicking tale of this audacious con man with wit, razor-sharp insight and dazzling storytelling. Hang on for a wild ride.”
—Dean Jobb, author of Empire of Deception

“Anyone who thinks celebrity culture is a new phenomenon should read King Con. Drawing on a vast range of sources, Willetts has pieced together a rich and bizarre Jazz Age story of the century’s most shameless confidence trickster… The cons are astounding but the escapes are even more outrageous. Whether he’s peddling postcards or hoodwinking royalty, Laplante remains a fascinating figure. A brilliant feat of research is turned into a racing read.”
Christopher Fowler, author of the Bryant & May crime novels

“Willetts has a real gift for writing about compelling but repellant characters and making you care about what happens to them. King Con is about another of these fascinating monsters.”
—Catherine Arnold, author of Necropolis: London and Its Dead

Author Q&A

A conversation with Paul Willetts, author of
KING CON:
The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age’s Greatest Impostor
 
 
 
Once a worldwide celebrity, Edgar Laplante is now virtually forgotten. How did you first hear about him?
 
Four or five years ago I was browsing through the online catalog of Britain’s National Archives when I came across a police file headed, “Raymond or Raj Tawanna alias Edgar La Plante alias ‘Chief White Elk,’ American international swindler.” This spurred me to arrange to see Laplante’s physical file, which provided the initial ingredients of an extremely strange story.
 
How did Laplante, a white man, convince so many people that he was Native American?
 
It’s an improbable trick, isn’t it? He pulled it off through a combination of con artistry and, to a lesser extent, the endorsement of his first wife—who was actually Native American and believed his lies about being a once-wealthy chief. He was also able to take advantage of the fact that the majority of white Americans probably hadn’t ever set eyes on a real Native American—even in a photo or movie. Mind you, films added another layer of plausibility to Laplante’s story because they tended to feature white people in the Native American roles.
 
How did you conduct your research?
 
Everyone involved in the story has long since died, so my research was purely archival. Yet for someone who led such an itinerant and unconventional life, Laplante left behind an amazingly extensive paper trail: police files, newspapers articles—articles that even include transcribed conversations with him. Had I not had access to this vast cache of raw material, I wouldn’t have been able to contemplate such a novelistic approach, since each potentially atmospheric detail needs to be supported by extensive archival sources. There’s an interesting paradox at the heart of all this: Bureaucratic mounds of documentation, which appear to be the antithesis of creativity, are essential to so-called creative nonfiction.
 
Laplante toured North America and Europe performing in stage shows. What did that entail, and what role did those shows play in society at the time?
 
His stage act involved demonstrating Cherokee war dances, lecturing about Cherokee culture, and singing selections of popular songs that showcased his rich baritone voice. Often his performances received top billing in vaudeville or its British counterpart, known as “variety.” Shows of this type toured well-established circuits, offering family entertainment in venues that ranged from storefronts to grand theaters accommodating 2,000 or more customers. Typically, vaudeville shows comprised as many as nine acts, each lasting between ten and thirty minutes, the full show spanning upward of three hours. In both vaudeville and variety, those acts featured everything from comedians and unicyclists to acrobats and singing ventriloquists. But Laplante’s rise to vaudeville stardom coincided with that medium—America’s preeminent form of entertainment for so long—being ousted by movies. He ended up performing live preludes to film screenings, everywhere from the frontier towns of Montana to the chic boulevards of Paris.
 
What were some of Laplante’s different personas, and how did he choose them?
 
He had a couple of successful and enduring ones. The first of these involved him masquerading as Tom Longboat, the Onondagan marathon runner—a great celebrity in those days. Laplante’s most famous persona was, however, Chief White Elk, who was wholly his own creation. By reinventing himself as the leader of the Canadian Cherokee, he tapped into a widespread fascination with Native Americans—a fascination nourished by dime novels, Wild West shows, silent movies, and bestselling fiction such as The Last of the Mohicans. Though Laplante enjoyed considerable acclaim as a vaudeville performer, he craved public adoration on an even greater scale. His Chief White Elk persona offered a convenient way of achieving his goal.
 
Can you describe what Laplante’s lifestyle was like at the height of his fame?
 
Obviously, rock ’n’ roll didn’t exist back then, yet there was something rock star–like about his excesses—the drugs, the alcohol, the casual sex, the luxury hotels, the parties. Decades before Bianca Jagger’s celebrated horseback ride into Studio 54, Laplante rode into a costume party at a seafront hotel, complete with his feathered headdress and the rest of his Cherokee outfit. After he’d dismounted and received enthusiastic applause, he wandered out of the hotel, boarded a waiting seaplane, and flew off. I’m envious of his theatrical panache.
 
What do you think was the most impressive con that Laplante pulled?
 
When he toured France, Belgium, and Italy in the guise of Chief White Elk, he relieved various gullible aristocratic women of vast sums of money—equivalent to as much as $58.9 million in 2018 terms. Unlike conventional confidence tricksters, though, he just gave the money away. Much of it went to the impoverished Italians who mobbed him wherever he traveled in their country. For a while, Italy was in thrall to what might be called Elkmania—a prototype of Beatlemania and other brands of celebrity obsession.
 
It’s ironic that Laplante, like so many others of the era, pretended to be a Native American for material gain at a time when many authentic Native people were being stripped of their assets and rights. Why the contradiction?
 
White America treated Native Americans appallingly while churning out movies, dime novels, and Wild West shows meant for white audiences—shows that demonstrate at least some admiration for Native people. Laplante exploited both that admiration and the plight of Native Americans. Some of his most lucrative scams involved him posing as a campaigner for all Native Americans to receive U.S. citizenship and for them to have improved educational opportunities.
 
KING CON is a story of false celebrity, over-the-top-showmanship, and ingenious cons. Do you see any similarities between Edgar Laplante’s time and our own?
 
Remote though the Jazz Age feels, there’s something very topical about Laplante’s escapades, about the way he manipulated people, about his exploitation of celebrity-worship, and about identity theft. On a more specific level, I can’t help seeing similarities between him and Trump, who shares his flamboyant theatricality, his craving for attention and, more to the point, his gift for projecting a bogus, self-aggrandizing version of himself.
 
There’s a temptation to make the smug assumption that Laplante wouldn’t be able to operate in the Google age. In many ways, though, it’s become easier for impostors to function. They can, for instance, lay a trail of misinformation across fake websites and social media.
 
What do you think drove Laplante to do what he did, and how did he manage to avoid imprisonment for so long?
 
According to a lot of the material I found (including a psychiatrist’s evaluation), he wasn’t your typical con man, motivated only by financial gain. Money was just a means to obtain people’s attention, as well as their admiration. Fortunately for him, Laplante was working in an era when America’s communications and law enforcement networks were quite rudimentary. Whenever he was in danger of being exposed or arrested, he could move to another city and start again. He was clearly a wonderful actor, who could be uncannily plausible—and that must also have helped him avoid arrest.
 
Recent news stories about modern-day con artists have garnered a lot of interest. One of these is even being produced as a TV series by Shonda Rhimes. Why do you think we continue to be fascinated by tales of impostors and their outrageous scams?
 
Impostors like Anna Delvey and Artur Samarin are inherently fascinating, partly for the same reason that we’re fascinated by confidence tricksters and conjurors, whose work requires a blend of intelligence, theatrical performance, and psychological insight. I’m sure we’re also drawn to stories about impostors because we envy their brazen daring, their preparedness to flout the rules, their determination to shrug off their otherwise mundane lives. These sort of stories possess intrinsic drama. In Laplante’s case, that drama is magnified by his compulsion to take bigger and bigger risks. The audacity of his lies and the scale of his success make people like Samarin and Delvey appear small-time and, dare I say it, a bit dull.

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