A darkly funny memoir and investigation into the charms and crimes of the untrustworthy
Romance scams, pyramid schemes, bogus debts and fake news, the world is awash with confidence tricksters and swindlers. But what happens if the fraudster is your lover?
It has been said that trust is a risk masquerading as a promise and, as Hemingway suggested, 'The way to make people trust-worthy is to trust them'. Once we have fallen under the spell of malevolent hucksters, their power is real, as is the loss of self and hope when the spell breaks.
A hybrid memoir and a personal detective story, Trust is an exploration of what it means to trust, why we trust, and what happens when trust is betrayed. With a particular view to fraud and corruption within the hallowed walls of sandstone universities, Ryckmans brings to light the oft subtle, brutal nature of control that fraudsters have over their victims, and shows the deep impacts their actions have on others personally and professionally. The cover up -- sometimes said to be worse than the crime -- has insidious effects.
Trust is a fractured fable. It is darkly funny, wistful, and spare in tone and approach.
'The extraordinary story of an Irish Ripley, a fraudster and conman who fooled central banks, elite universities, major companies and scores of individual business leaders is in itself captivating and astounding, but he also plied a series of smart sophisticated women with seductive invitations, extravagant gifts and lashings of Yeats and, as Jeanne Ryckmans so deftly reconstructs, it all fell apart when he got violent with her.' - Anne Summers, author of Damned Whores and God's Police
'I read it in one sitting and loved loved loved it. Truly. It is beautifully and cleverly told, and the various devices -- the poetry, the nicknames, the world-wandering, the little hands, the carpets, Paddington -- all work splendidly; - Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman
'Vivid and transparent. Deft. I was absolutely hooked from the first paragraph, and the creeping sense that something was amiss was masterful. The fundamental power is the unflinching basis in truth.' - Professor Joanna Benjamin, Emeritus Professor of Law, The London School of Economics