As a lover of both art and true crime media, art forgery stories are a goldmine for me. They have all the seediness of the criminal underworld, but centered around art. In my vision of the forgery world, the forgers are bookish anarchists, all the victims are snobs, and hardened FBI agents break down weeping over a Chagall. I'm not alone in those fantasies; novels like Daniel Silva's Portrait of an Unknown Woman prove people want to read art forgery served up with international intrigue. Con/Artist is not a book like that. Tony Tetro, the subject and one of the authors, has little in common with romanticized portrayals of his profession. The book is an easy read, full of interesting facts about forgeries, all centered around a pretty regular guy.

In an ironic twist, this book about forgery inspired some confusion over authorship for me. Both Tetro and journalist Giampiero Ambrosi...