“Pity the publishers who made all those hasty deals for Madoff books,” New York’s Hugo Lindgren wrote here back in March. “They may turn out to be his final victims.” Indeed. The Wall Street Journal gave the three that have been released so far extremely tepid reviews, and former Harper Collins editor Marion Maneker agrees: The fault isn’t even the writing, he says. It’s that as a villain, Madoff disappoints: “A tendency toward clean-freak behavior and parents who had their own run-in with the SEC are about all we get for color and motivation,” he writes in today’s Big Money. “Even his financial deviancy was overblown … Madoff’s fraud was horrifyingly simple.” And is there really a market for a book about his wang? [The Big Money]
Earlier: Bye Bye Bernie
