“Madoff: The Last Word” by Richard Behar: Book review by Bethany McLean

Madoff: The last word from Richard Behar

“TThere is no folly of the beast of the earth that is not infinitely surpassed by the madness of man.” Thus writes Herman Melville in Moby-Dick, and it is a fitting quote for Richard Behar’s new book, Madoff: The last word. Bernie Madoff was a madman, of course, but he has also become a modern-day white whale for countless journalists, prosecutors, bankruptcy experts, victims, supporters and many others who are still trying to dissect the dense web of incomprehensible fraud that was Madoff, who died in prison in 2021, into something the normal human mind can understand.

Behar’s quest to do just that took up a significant portion of his life. Early in the book, he tells us that he first asked for an interview with Madoff in early 2009, just months after the revelation of his $68 billion fraud shocked the world. Behar stayed on the case for 15 years, while sifting through more than 300 incoming emails and dozens of handwritten letters from Madoff, conducting some 50 phone conversations between the two, more than 100,000 pages of documents, and over 300 interviews.