Blending years of deep reporting with distinctive, powerful prose, this unique true crime narrative recounts the exploits of a psychopathic con artist and gender-bending criminal mastermind who swept through the entertainment industry, stealing dozens of identities and millions of dollars while exploiting the dreams of artist around the world. - (Baker & Taylor)

"Blending years of deep reporting with distinctive, powerful prose, Scott C. Johnson's unique true crime narrative recounts the tale of the brilliantly cunning imposter who carved a path of financial and emotional destruction across the world. Gifted with a diabolical flair for impersonation, manipulation, and deception, the Con Queen used their skill with accents and deft psychological insight to sweep through the entertainment industry. Johnson traces the origins of this mastermind and follows the years-long investigation of a singularly determined private detective who helped deliver them to the FBI"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

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“This book is as engrossing as anything by Agatha Christie, as unsettling as a novel by Stephen King, and reported with a vigorous empathy that leaves Truman Capote in the dust. Scott Johnson’s courage, his relentless quest for the truth behind a set of brilliantly obscured cruelties, and his examination of the very fabric of psychopathy ultimately lead him to question how the appalling lies spat out by the Con Queen relate to the daily untruths required of us all. His narrative is further deepened by breathtakingly honest reportage about himself and his family, which led him to this radical investigation of a deformed mind. I cannot remember the last time I read anything with such breathless fascination.”—Andrew Solomon

The spellbinding tale of an epic international manhunt for a psychopathic con artist who exploited the dreams of creators to steal dozens of identities and millions of dollars.

Blending years of deep reporting with distinctive, powerful prose, Scott C. Johnson’s unique true crime narrative recounts the tale of the brilliantly cunning imposter who carved a path of financial and emotional destruction across the world. Gifted with a diabolical flair for impersonation, manipulation, and deception, the Con Queen used their skill with accents and deft psychological insight to sweep through the entertainment industry. Johnson traces the origins of this mastermind and follows the years-long investigation of a singularly determined private detective who helped deliver them to the FBI. Described by one victim as a “crazy, evil genius,” the Con Queen enacted one of the most elaborate scams ever to hit Hollywood—the perfect criminal, committing the perfect crime for our time. 

But for what purpose? And with what motive? 

Johnson’s unparalleled access to sources—including exclusive interviews with victims and never-before-heard recordings of the Con Queen—brought global attention to the scam, spurred law enforcement to act, and led Johnson himself to venture in search of the Con Queen. Journeying from Los Angeles to the United Kingdom to Jakarta, Johnson eventually came face-to-face with one of the most disturbing criminal minds in recent history, only to realize what chasing the Con Queen revealed about himself and his own troubled family history. 

Booklist Reviews

Con games, by their very nature, are elaborate and hard to follow, created by tricksters who rely on retaining ultimate control of intricate and often illogical narratives by employing devious methods of impersonation, intimidation, and manipulation. One of the most diabolical of such intrigues can be attributed to the Con Queen of Hollywood, an impostor so adept at vocal impersonation that he convinced his victims he was anyone from a high-powered female Hollywood producer to a male terrorist launching international bomb threats from a prison cell. Johnson, a Hollywood Reporter journalist, weaves a gripping true-crime narrative of the multiple-personality fraudster Harvey, who bilked dozens of movie-industry adjacent workers out of their life savings with outlandish promises of lucrative employment on projects that turned out to be nonexistent. In consultation with a private security analyst equally determined to expose this one-person crime syndicate, Johnson deploys victim interviews, international travel, and even encounters with Harvey himself to reveal the details of the sociopathic behavior that enabled him to deceive his victims and avoid detection. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

A professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, Hershfield illuminates an idea that's recently been in the news: to improve your life now, you need to work harder to imagine and connect meaningfully to Your Future Self (45,000-copy first printing). With The Con Queen of Hollywood, award-winning investigative journalist Johnson expands on his Hollywood Reporter story about the con artist who managed to rip off millions of dollars from people in the entertainment industry (100,000-copy first printing). With The Elissas, Leach presents a cautionary tale centering on best friend Elissa, who was thrown out of private school and sent to a $10,000-a-month boarding school for troubled teenagers, where she bonded with classmates named (eerily) Alissa and Alyssa; Elissa died of encephalitis shortly after graduating, and her two friends subsequently succumbed to drug use (60,000-copy first printing). As a girl in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Mahfouz was denied an education but still entertained Defiant Dreams, teaching herself mathematics at age 16 and sneaking into Pakistan to take the SATs; she eventually escaped to the United States and is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University. Patterson's Chaos Kings focuses on the Universa fund to illuminate the activities of high-risk traders who go after so-called black swans—unforeseeable upheavals that can yield billions in profits. Having explained in the nearly million-copy best-selling The Color of Law how U.S. federal, state, and local governments have not just facilitated but actively created segregation, Richard Rothstein teams with housing policy expert (and daughter) Leah Rothstein in Just Action to explain how segregation can be dismantled, focusing on what local organizations can do about securing renters' rights, diversifying exclusively white areas, and more. President of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, Waldman shows how the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative Supermajority has driven the Court's rulings far from what most people in the country want and what the implications will be.

Library Journal Reviews

Award-winning investigative journalist Johnson (The Wolf and the Watchman) expands on his Hollywood Reporter story about a manipulative and abusive con artist who impersonated women Hollywood executives in order to scam people in the entertainment industry out of millions of dollars. Central to the investigation is K2 Intelligence employee Nicoletta Kotsianas, who documented cases of mostly men lured into flying to Jakarta for phony film-related jobs, only to be bilked out of the money they paid for transportation. Kotsianas discovered that the mastermind was not a con "queen," as many thought, but an Indonesian man named Hargobind Tahilramani. The author tracked him down in an English hotel and interviewed him at length before he was arrested in 2020. The book adeptly discusses the psychological trauma that Tahilramani inflicted on his sisters and his victims, some of whom lost their life savings or were enticed into phone sex. While the cast of characters and events can be confusing at times, readers looking for a unique international true crime story likely won't be disappointed. VERDICT A chilling study of deception and evil.—Denise Miller