What this book is
The Art of the Con describes itself, in its Author’s Note, as “a novel built on a documentary spine”. The public record in it is real: the judgments, the Hansard, the ASIC releases, the reporting of the ABC, the BBC, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review, the Indonesian enforcement actions, and the competing corporate statements filed in Hong Kong, Lombok and Bali in the first months of 2026.
Everything interior is invention — the private conversations, the weather in the rooms, the thoughts of the men inside them, and the minor characters who carry the human cost. Where a named real person appears, they appear doing only what the record says they did. Where two parties dispute a fact, both accounts are given.
How it is arranged
Front matter (an Author’s Note and a Dramatis Personae), then four books — The Sign, The Apprentice, The Catwalk and The Archipelago — holding 42 chapters, then a coda and a list of sources. 55 sections and about 26,805 words in all.
The author
The book is credited to Kate McClymont, and carries a publication year of 2026 and Australian English as its language, according to the EPUB from which this site is generated.
Reading it here
The complete text is free to read on this site, with light and dark themes, adjustable text size, a contents rail that follows you through the book, and a browser-saved reading position. Read every chapter, the Author’s Note and the sources here on the website.
Please note: this is a work of documentary fiction about real people and real events. Read the editorial note and the sources before drawing conclusions from it.