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The year is 1920 and Bostonians are enticed to invest their life savings with a charismatic Italian-American named Charles Ponzi. He is neither a financial wizard nor a boldly innovative thinker, but a clever con artist who now seeks to make his obsessive dream of amassing great wealth come true at the huge expense of thousands of innocent people.

Ponzi’s power to dupe investors quickly extends beyond Boston’s borders, and Massachusetts Bank Commissioner Joseph C. Allen investigates. Allen seizes five banks and prevents Ponzi from accessing his stolen millions. But Allen and wife Hart-Lester Harris Allen’s happy future together becomes highly questionable when a mob contract is put out on Joe’s life.

As told through Hart-Lester’s eyes, Good Night, Dear Hart, Good Night opens with her idealistic, romantic adventures as a wealthy young college graduate; her marriage to Allen and their early trials and tribulations; and how Hart and Joe’s paths cross with Ponzi, whose own rise to power and rapid descent unfolds in alternating chapters. The book offers a fascinating look at a turbulent time in Boston’s history as well as an examination of Ponzi, the inventor of the first ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme that continues to be reinvented (Bernard Madoff in 2009).

HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1944037345

PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1944037338