Catching the Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort Bantam HK$200
Like his literary hero, Tom Wolfe, Jordan Belfort is a chronicler of the zeitgeist, with one significant difference: where Wolfe is a spectator, Belfort has always been a player. The Wolf of Wall Street, Belfort's first book, was so tightly crafted, so uncanny in its pacing and characterisation, and the tenor of its spiritual corruption was so accurate, it razed the competition. What novel could compare to this?
Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison is the most elegant of sequels. George Clooney fought Brad Pitt for the film rights to both books and won; Martin Scorsese was hired as director. Such hot enthusiasm was predictable. Belfort, described by his lawyer in the book as 'the poster child for small-stock fraud', is intelligent and an unflinching writer. But the voice in which he wrote Wolf - manic, adolescent, in itself a spree - has changed; Catching is the work of a man who understands the consequences of his actions.
'I got problems, Alonso,' Belfort tells the FBI agent who trapped him. 'I'm facing years in jail, I'm engaged to a woman I'm not in love with, I have no career path, my kids live on the other side of the country, I'm wearing a f***ing ankle bracelet, I've betrayed my closest friends, they've betrayed me, and, to top it all off, I'm on the verge of running out of money and I don't have a way to make any more right now.'
Belfort uses his confession to the US government as the framework for the narrative. He writes bitingly of his introduction to fraud as a 16-year-old - selling ice creams on the beach without a licence - and of the accolades it reaped from adults impressed by his initiative; and from there, the story of his downfall.
'Understand,' Belfort explains to his prosecutors, 'you don't start out on the dark side of the force unless, of course, you're a sociopath ... The problem is that you become desensitised to things; you cross over the line a tiny bit and nothing bad happens so you figure it's okay to step over again, except this time you step a bit further.'