Flim-Flam Man A True Family History

The Washington Post

Once John Vogel occupies center stage the book takes on a greater force and momentum. In fact, Flim-Flam Man is most provocative when it features John's voice. During a stint in prison for armed robbery, he writes a series of letters to Jennifer; his yearning to do right by his daughter is palpable in this correspondence. — Amy Kroin

USA Today

In setting down her father's life of crime as a matter of public record, Vogel writes with a measure of pathos and, not inexplicably, pride. In this unlikely homage to the criminal life, she reminds us how easy it is to judge a man by his behavior and why we must dig deeper to fight those instincts. Her unsentimental reconstruction of a man overshadowed by bad news restores a dignity to her father's life. —

Publishers Weekly

Armed robber, arsonist, counterfeiter-words that describe a hardened criminal or dear old dad? In Vogel's case, both. The author traces the criminal career of her father, John Vogel, through her own relationship with him. As the favorite of three children, she is able to gain special access to the inner workings of her father's dangerous life as well as glean his intense affection. A kid growing up in the 1970s, Vogel realizes her father has a penchant for the finer things in life, but lacks the access or the wherewithal to achieve his goals. "Dad had never been interested in the slow, dutiful mechanics of becoming successful-only in the serene, wrapped-in-cashmere end result. The way he saw it, you were either a garbage collector or a CEO. He was too impatient." John's impatience manifests itself in different get-rich-quick schemes, pie-in-the-sky inventions and plans that never quite pay off. His drinking and drug use intensify over the years of disappointment, contributing further to his despair. Yet he remains devoted to his daughter, imparting to her his sense of sentimentality. Vogel suffers her own bumps in the road as a teenager, but unlike her father, she's able to pull herself back on track, completing college and becoming a journalist (she later finds work as an investigative reporter in Minneapolis). Her heartbreaking memoir is an attempt to better understand John Vogel, a classical music-loving convicted felon, adoring father and bank robber. She tells a powerful story while investigating their complex relationship, writing with empathy and without excuses. Agent, Chris Calhoun. (Feb. 17) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Investigative reporter Vogel here tells the true story of life with John Vogel: counterfeiter, arsonist, con man, and careless but loving father. A dreamer who couldn't be bothered to live by society's rules, Vogel made his way in life by scamming whomever he could, eventually turning his considerable artistic talents to counterfeiting $100 bills. Since the author spent much of her life seeing her father only sporadically, this is more about her life and reactions to her strange family than it is a biography of John Vogel. Jennifer grew up alternately loving and hating her father, keeping her distance but never quite able to break with him, even at the end. About half the book covers the time between his final arrest in the fourth-largest counterfeiting bust in the United States and his suicide after six months on the run. A truly surreal scene involves Jennifer sitting down with her friends to watch a reenactment of his crime on "Unsolved Mysteries." This oddly touching memoir of a damaged life is a good choice for public libraries.-Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Heartbreaking, hard-boiled memoir of the author’s late father, a liar and criminal she loved deeply. Vogel’s masterful account of their fraught relationship begins with her father’s 1995 funeral, a poor affair in Minneapolis following a police chase that ended with John Vogel shooting himself. He had left Jennifer, her mother, and siblings years earlier in order to pursue his own mercurial path. She grew up poor in Minnesota and Iowa, moving from place to place, often just ahead of the bill collector, wondering where John was. Over the years, he ran a real-estate company, opened a burger joint, probably committed arson, almost murdered somebody for money, robbed banks, and printed nearly 20 million counterfeit dollars. But he could always show up at Jennifer’s doorstep with a smile and a gift and win everybody over with his improbable charm. Behind the smile was the desperation of a man who wanted nothing more than a normal family and a normal life but couldn’t manage the strains of such an existence. So John contented himself by living in the margins, always making the surprise visit, and never fulfilling promises. "Sometimes he tried too hard. Faint panic lurked behind these gay efforts as Dad weighed each individual moment to determine whether he’d won us or lost us." Jennifer bounced from her mother’s house to living with her father in Seattle to bumming around with West Coast hippies. She then returned to Minnesota, where she ended up as an investigative reporter at City Pages, the Minneapolis alternative weekly. It was a good job for her, providing a useful outlet for the suspicion of cops and all authority bred in her hardscrabble family. Vogel’s memoir benefits from her hard-nosedprose. This account, which could have been limp with sentimentality, skirts the easy route and presents a clear, though hardly unemotional, view of a damaged, complicated man and the loyal, angry, loving daughter he left behind. Will haunt readers for days. Agent: Chris Calhoun/Sterling Lord