Before he hit 20, Blanchard was capable of making tens of thousands of dollars by stealing electronics and bringing them back for full cash returns. Then he moved on to robbing ATMs at banks with methods that seem ripped from movie plots. He started by disguising himself as a worker to get into a bank under construction, then left cameras and mics to keep tabs on the workers so he would know when the bank would be vulnerable.

Readers may pause and reflect on whether they have fallen victim to a cunning fraud at some time in their lives. Others, acutely aware of past victimhood and the significant loss of hard-earned funds at the hands of a confidence man (or woman), won’t find any of this hard to believe. Konnikova’s goal in The Confidence Game isn’t to chronicle spectacular examples of the con, but instead, to offer “an exploration of the psychological principles that underlie each and every game … from the moment the endeavor is conceived to the aftermath of its execution.”