Frank Abagnale · 1980 · global

Frank Abagnale's 1980 memoir of a teenage confidence trickster who, in the 1960s, passed himself off as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor and a lawyer while cashing millions in forged checks across the United States and beyond. By his account he flew a million miles on borrowed uniforms before the chase ended in France. Caught, jailed in three countries and finally recruited by the FBI, his story became a byword for audacious imposture, a globe-hopping rise, fall and redemption.

1. 1
   New York

   A teenage runaway from Bronxville, Frank Abagnale starts forging checks on the streets of New York and dreams up a far grander con.

2. 2
   Miami

   In a Pan Am co-pilot's uniform he deadheads free on jump-seats out of Miami, flying coast to coast without ever touching the controls.

3. 3
   Atlanta

   He lies low in Georgia as a bogus hospital doctor, then turns lawyer in Louisiana, cashing bad paper in every state he lands in.

4. 4
   Montpellier

   The net tightening, he flees to France and his mother's home town of Montpellier, where a clerk recognises his face from a wanted notice.

5. 5
   Perpignan

   Caught at last, he serves a brutal stretch in the French prison at Perpignan.

6. 6
   Malmo

   Then is handed on to a far gentler Swedish jail at Malmo before extradition.

7. 7
   Washington

   And home to a United States prison, until the FBI frees him to spend his talents catching forgers like his younger self.