NONFICTION
Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family by Laurie Sandell (Little, Brown)
It’s not easy to be a Madoff nowadays.
Bernard Madoff pretty much sealed the family legacy by orchestrating the biggest investment fraud in history, frittering away $50 billion of other people’s money in a Ponzi scheme so large it seems unthinkable to this day. Madoff the Cad didn’t care whom he ripped off — friends, family, charity groups, retirees. He built a house of cards on the backs of investors who thought he was a Wall Street genius who could do no wrong. When the banking crisis blew the cards down in 2008, there was nothing left.
Madoff admitted to the scheme and is serving out his days in a federal penitentiary. Now his surviving son and wife have gone public in an effort to distance themselves from the financial scandal of the century.
In Laurie Sandell’s “Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family,” Andrew and Ruth Madoff put their hands on the proverbial Bible and swear they didn’t know a thing about the investor’s criminal ways until Dec. 10, 2008, when the strain of the fraud became too much and he was forced to tell them. Within hours, Andrew and his brother Mark decided to turn their father in. He was arrested the next day.
The book marks the first time Bernard Madoff’s immediate family members have detailed their side of the story. Their silence to this point has only perpetuated the belief among the conspiracy-minded that the family had to know Madoff was a fraud but chose to do nothing, afraid they would be forced to give up their billionaire lifestyle. Critics point out that Mark and Andrew both worked at the Madoff investment firm and that Ruth even worked as a bookkeeper for her husband for a time. Surely they’re just as guilty as he is.
No contact with Madoff
Sandell does her best to dispel such notions. Now-poor investors who lost everything are faring. This is a family tell-all from start to finish. However, Sandell made no effort to talk to Bernie in prison, and as a result, the family narrative feels hollow and incomplete.
Madoff remains a mystery, but, thanks to Sandell, the world knows everything there is to tell about Catherine Hooper, Andrew’s fiancé in perpetuity. If they marry, their assets merge, a no-no when the trustee in charge of making things whole with Madoff’s victims has taken Andrew to court to confiscate the millions he still has in the bank. Hooper’s legal separation from Andrew — even though they’ve been living together for years — is probably the reason she is the only person other than Sandell making money off the sale of the book.
At 337 pages, the book is about 100 pages too long, largely because Sandell obsesses over every detail of Hooper’s courtship with Andrew and her efforts to impress her future in-laws.
Despite such drifts into romantic detail, Sandell makes a legitimate case that Mark and Andrew Madoff really were caught off guard by their father’s crimes. Bernard Madoff’s asset-management group was isolated two floors below the investment division that the Madoff brothers ran for a time. Madoff kept his circle of co-conspirators small and tight, leaving everyone else in the dark about how he was able to produce such a consistent return on the dollar month after month, despite market fluctuations.
The brothers confronted their aging father numerous times about a succession plan for the asset-management group should he die suddenly some day. Madoff refused, telling his sons that that part of the business would simply die with him — a preposterous notion, given the faith thousands of investors had placed in him.
Then there is the undeniably Shakespearean twist that lends credence to the idea that this was a family in pain, disgraced by a patriarch who destroyed the lives of virtually everyone close to him. Two years to the day from when Bernie was arrested, Mark Madoff hanged himself with a dog leash in his New York apartment while his 2-year-old son slept in the next room. No one knows what demon threw Mark over the edge, but by then the family name had been smeared across the globe. Tossed to the curb by his former colleagues on Wall Street, Mark struggled to regain a sense of self-worth.
As for Ruth, she has had a hard time thinking of her husband of 50 years as a shmuck. When it came time to post bail, she didn’t hesitate to put up a house as collateral and was mortified when her sons refused to do the same. Ruth stood by her man, billion-dollar losses and lifelong affairs with other women be damned. Despondent in the days and weeks after Madoff’s arrest, the couple attempted suicide together.
Sandell tries hard to lay out a case for Andrew and Ruth’s innocence, but it’s hard to feel sorry for a family “scraping by” with just a few million. Sandell’s book serves as a reminder that the real victims of Bernard Madoff are not named Madoff.
Nonfiction
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Lots of sports fans out there, and with 4.1 million copies of Feinstein’s books out there, too, this should be big. Library Journal
Fiction
The Forgotten Affairs of Youth, by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon)
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In this standalone novel, Sister Souljah continues the story of the title character of Midnight. Barnes & Noble
The Talk Show Murders, by Al Roker and Dick Lochte (Delacorte)
Roker and Lochte delve into the hitherto unknown dark side of their engaging lead, chef and TV personality Billy Blessing, in their third whodunit. Publishers Weekly
Paperback
Cliques, Hicks, and Ugly Sticks, by K.D. McCrite (Thomas Nelson)
After an automobile accident, Isabel St. James — resident drama coach and drama queen — needs help putting together the church play. From the publisher
