An 18th-Century Birthing Scam
Dexter Palmer’s third novel, about a fantastical medical hoax, doubles as an exploration of the age-old desire to believe the unbelievable.
Last year, I briefly got hooked on scam stories. I wasn’t alone. Reporters, TV and podcast producers, critics, and readers all trained their eyes on hoaxes and hoaxers ranging from the fake German heiress Anna Delvey to the would-be inventor Elizabeth Holmes to the fraudster Billy McFarland, whose failed Fyre Festival provided fodder for two separate documentaries. , meanwhile, ran a 12,000-word exposé of Dan Mallory, a book editor turned novelist who rose through the ranks of publishing by apparently falsifying his background. As I consumed these accounts, I started worrying that I liked listening to Holmes’s sales pitch and reading about Delvey’s exploits too much. I suspected that I was testing the bounds
