Conville & Walsh

Fort Worth, November 1919. Five big-time confidence men swindle Texan rancher Frank Norfleet out of life savings worth one million US Dollars. For the smooth-talking criminals, the haul is nothing special – just an average week’s work for a gang at the top of its game, in an America that’s bursting at the seams with newly-minted wealth ripe for the stealing. Tomorrow they’ll be in Florida, testing out their sophisticated “big con” scheme on another sucker. But for Norfleet, it’s the turning point in a life that will henceforth be filled with extraordinary adventure.

Leaving his ranch to his wife, the unremarkable farmer turns detective – and dedicates the next six years of his life to tracking down the men who scammed him, one by one. Norfleet’s quest turns into history’s greatest ever manhunt – a 30,000 mile search for vengeance that ended with one man dead, three dozen more captured and imprisoned, and the utter destruction of the biggest, richest, best-protected gang of confidence men America had ever known. It’s a forgotten American epic: a hurricane-paced chase across three continents in pursuit of the crooks who inspired the classic movie The Sting – and also a tale of astonishing redemption that sees Frank Norfleet turn himself from a hapless mark, with just enough larceny in him to fall for the con men’s game, into an unstoppable straight-arrow manhunter who might just be the greatest detective in American history.