Other People’s Money: The Rise and Fall of Britain’s Boldest Credit Card Fraudster, by Neil Forsyth with Elliot Castro (Pan, £7.99)

9:12am Saturday 10th May 2008

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What goes on inside the mind of a conman? By the time you have finished this book, you have a pretty good idea, and it's not very pleasant.

Elliot Castro comes across as someone who believed that riches were all, only to discover the emptiness and loneliness of constantly maintaining a lie as he swindled his way around the world, staying in the most expensive hotels and buying from the swankiest shops in the search of success.

He is highly intelligent, able to exploit other people for his own benefit and contemptuous of the big credit card companies he defrauded.

With Neil Forsyth's help, he is surprisingly frank about himself and what motivated him to live the high life in Ibiza, Beverly Hills and elsewhere, first class of course, all before he turned 22.

But he doesn't say much about the inconvenience and problems he caused to those whose credit card accounts he misused to finance his big-spender lifestyle.

The book is highly readable and, despite the picture that unfolds, it will keep you up well after your bedtime.

It is definitely enhanced by the chapters where the authors move away from Castro to the detectives both in the British Isles and elsewhere who were on his trail.

They inject the essential realism that prevents the reader from totally descending into Castro's depressing world.