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Viking has acquired the rights for what it hopes will be "the first and the best" UK book on Bernard Madoff, an American businessman charged with $50bn fraud. Joel Rickett, editorial director, bought UK, commonwealth and serial rights from Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Portfolio, Penguin USA.
The book is by Erin Arvedlund, a journalist who broke the first news of the story in 2001. "People would much rather read the story of someone who's been following the story," said Rickett. "Someone who was asking the questions, the tough questions, and not just jumping on the bandwagon." The working title of the book is Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which is the same name as her first major expose in Barron's, an American financial magazine. Viking has scheduled the book for publication in Spring 2010.
The book will "get to the heart of the story," said Rickett. "The Madoff scandal is an amazing story with a genuine villain - this was fraud on an epic scale. There are dozens of hasty Madoff book proposals flying around, but Erin Arvedlund is the best writer to nail it: she was asking the tough questions long before her rivals and all of Wall Street dared to believe Madoff was anything less than a demi-God. She will get right to the characters and issues at the heart of the con, and through them she'll tell a much wider story of greed, arrogance and stupidity."