The Mark Inside Audiobook By Amy Reading cover art

The Mark Inside

A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

The Mark Inside

By: Amy Reading
Narrated by: Richard McGonagle
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.25

Buy for $20.25

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

In 1919, Texas rancher J. Frank Norfleet lost everything he had in a stock market swindle. He did what many other marks did - he went home, borrowed more money from his family, and returned for another round of swindling.

Only after he lost that second fortune did he reclaim control of his story. Instead of crawling back home in shame, he vowed to hunt down the five men who had conned him. Armed with a revolver and a suitcase full of disguises, Norfleet crisscrossed the country from Texas to Florida to California to Colorado, posing as a country hick and allowing himself to be ensnared by confidence men again and again to gather evidence on his enemies. Within four years, Frank Norfleet had become nationally famous for his quest to out-con the con men.

Through Norfleet's ingenious reverse-swindle, Amy Reading reveals the mechanics behind the scenes of the big con - a piece of performance art targeted to the most vulnerable points of human nature. Reading shows how the big con has been woven throughout U.S. history. From the colonies to the railroads and the Chicago Board of Trade, America has always been a speculative enterprise, and bunco men and bankers alike have always understood that the common man was perfectly willing to engage in minor fraud to get a piece of the expanding stock market - a trait that made him infinitely gullible.

Amy Reading's fascinating account of con artistry in America and Frank Norfleet's wild caper invites you into the crooked history of a nation on the hustle, constantly feeding the hunger and the hope of the mark inside.

©2012 Amy Reading (P)2012 Random House Audio Americas Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions Criminology Investing & Trading Social Sciences True Crime United States Investing Inspiring American History

Critic reviews

"Most scholarship reads like a trip to the dentist. The Mark Inside reads like a trip to the track." (David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross and House of Games
)
All stars
Most relevant  

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

If you have ever been conned or have almost been conned like me, you will find this more than interesting. While I have been basically aware of the main ingredient of a con, that is to “promise you something you don’t deserve”. I was surprised by the inventiveness and dept of the story here told.
The author has done a great job of explaining the history of the con.

Excellent story based on real facts.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
an interesting history of confidence men at the turn of the last century but especially interesting for what it says about police corruption back in the day...

interesting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

This is a very interesting story, but could have been dispatched in a long magazine article (e.g., New Yorker or Atlantic) rather than in a full-fledged book. If you are willing to tolerate wading through all these interesting facts, then the book could be to your liking. If you are, like me, sometimes impatient with extraneous material with little to do with the plot line, you may find it hard going.

Did Richard McGonagle do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

The narrator was very good.

a scattering of interesting facts

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Because I selected this book for the subject matter and not for any terrific reviews that were written about it, I wasn't really expecting much. But this is a wonderful piece of work!

Ms. Reading is a superb researcher and a very gifted writer. I hope she's got something new in the works.

And the narration is among the best I've heard in 30 years of listened to narrated books of various kinds.

A very pleasant surprise!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is a lot of fun. The central character, a real man who got involved in some really outlandish and dangerous situations, is like someone from a movie. In fact if, like me, you love the movie The Sting, this is a must-listen. The narrator is especially well-cast, and makes even the duller moments engaging. But there aren't a lot of dull moments.

Occasionally I would think that some event presented as fact was just too outlandish to be true, that we only had the man's word for how it happened. To her credit, the author usually points this out, often with a funny or wry comment. Other times, against all probability, she provides additional evidence that some wild event really did happen, an independent witness or article.

If you've any interest in con artists or complicated true tales of vigilante justice, this is a perfect choice.

Sometimes Hard to Believe, but a Ton of Fun

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

What made the experience of listening to The Mark Inside the most enjoyable?

At first, I thought this book to be average. But, like a good song it rambles about your brain until you get it. I felt a need to listen to various chapters again and then the excellence of this book sunk in. This book was really well written with great insight and a lot of very subltle tongue-in-cheek when it was called for. If you read about Ponzi thus book fits in very well.

Who was your favorite character and why?

n/a

Which character – as performed by Richard McGonagle – was your favorite?

n/a

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

smiled- quite often

Good insight to how Ponzi came to be

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved it. It's amazing what happens to one's self made beliefs in life once it is punctured by thieves. One's core beliefs become anything but a mere shadow of their former selves in the pursuit of correcting the wrong. The years of dedication to finding these guys, right down to the very last guy, what the pursuit cost him and his family to find them all and what he had to learn along the way, especially that practically no man can be trusted - what an adventure.

Another book that would make a good movie.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Would you try another book from Amy Reading and/or Richard McGonagle?

This book begins with a ton of promise, but then the author tries to have it both ways by asking us to suspend our disbelief while continuing to read the text as non-fiction.

What could Amy Reading have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

I think that if she had waited until later in the text to ask us to make that suspension of disbelief, it might have been a more compelling read. Why not let us get caught up in the adventure?

What about Richard McGonagle’s performance did you like?

Love his voice and his matter of fact delivery. Tough like the old west, and perfect for the story.

Any additional comments?

There's a great book in here somewhere, I am just wondering if the structure works against the story.

Confusing Premise Makes for A Tough Read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.