Born, aptly, Ethel Swindell, she seems an unlikely candidate for a life of crime. Her family were wealthy, middle-class merchants in the North of England. But she suffered both from folie de grandeur and an acquisitive personality. What she lacked in looks (she weighed nearly 130 kilograms), she made up for in sheer nerve and seductive charm. From humble beginnings in petty theft, she progressed to an extravagant career of lies and deceit in the United Kingdom and Australia, with detours in the Isle of Man and the French Riviera.

Ethel lived the high life, persuading gullible socialites to hand over money by posing as an heiress, a destitute widow, a spy, an opera singer, even a confidante of the king. Her crimes finally caught up with her when she was arrested in Sydney hours before her glittering society wedding. Somehow, even then, she managed to give the police the slip.

Based on sound research, interviews with Ethel's granddaughter, and transcripts from tapes recorded by Ethel's late son, Freda Marnie Nicholl has written a lively account of a notorious woman. Jarringly, the book stumbles between straight biography and an imagined account of Ethel's life. Nicholl captures Ethel's brazenness and unabashed cheek, but it remains unclear whether she was rotten to the core, or unstable and deluded, unable to separate fact from fiction.