In an era when it is not unknown for a head of state to be judicially appointed rather than popularly elected, a highly entertaining tale of fraud, deceit, imposture, and usurpation seems highly appropriate. Unlike recent cameos of a winsome actress caught shoplifting or of a Hollywood "bagel-baby" producer caught forging the signature of a granite-jawed actor on a personal check, the reader of Catch Me if You Can is treated to snapshots of the protagonist - a high-school dropout - passing a southern state's bar examination and appointed an assistant attorney general, awarded a license to practice medicine in the state of Georgia, hired as a university professor of sociology in Utah, handed the controls of a 707, hiring coeds to model Pan Am uniforms throughout Europe. One close-up of the "doctor" at work will suffice: "This guy had a complaint about his foot. 'I'm a pediatrician. You want a podiatrist.' That one had mysterious pains in his stomach. 'I suggest you talk to your own doctor.' A brunette had an 'odd, tight feeling' around her upper chest. I examined the brunette. Her brassiere was too small." But the escape artist's "luck" also has a dark side: arrested and thrown into a dungeon in Perpignan, France; fed only bread, gruel, and water; never permitted to bathe, shave, or attend to other personal hygiene; harassed by sadistic guards; and left to rot for six months, he is finally extradited to humane Sweden suffering from severe malnutrition, vitamin deficiency, and double pneumonia. After recovering for six months, he is saved from extradition to Italy and then Spain, in whose barbaric prisons he faces certain death, by a compassionate judge who orders him deported to the U.S., whence, once he has served an additional four years' sentence, as an American citizen he cannot be extradited, and where he is ultimately rehabilitated and redeemed into a productive, married member of society who specializes in the detection and prevention of fraud.