A decades-long con meets the full light of day in a thrilling true-crime debut that reverberates on the world stage, journalist Yepoka Yeebo's Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World. John Ackah Blay-Miezah started by adopting a fake name and the title of "doctor." He declared that Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, had on his deathbed revealed that he had hidden millions of dollars for the country in a trust. Blay-Miezah, claiming a history with Nkrumah that sometimes required lying about his age, said that he knew the location of this money. Of course, he would need diplomatic status and money in order to retrieve it.
In a story that any writer of heist flicks would envy, Yeebo recounts how throughout the 1970s and '80s, Blay-Miezah played Ghanaian state officials with bright visions of their new country's future, and, at the same time, promised a financial boon to the post-colonial right-wing interests of the Nixon administration. Though he was imprisoned for fraud, he convinced his marks that he could make them--and Ghana--wealthy if only he could get out. And if all else failed, he could always fake illness and avoid arrest by disappearing en route to the hospital. But even after his death, there are still investors who believe the trust fund is out there. Readers will devour the gripping story of a lie that became a country's founding myth. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library