In this honest and engaging true-crime memoir, Betz-Hamilton revisits her small-town Indiana childhood and college years, and the identity fraud that rocked her family. Before it's an often-discussed crime, Betz-Hamilton's mother attributes the unpaid bills, fraudulent checks, and unknown property in her husband's name to stolen identity. Convinced that the perpetrator is someone close to them, the family of three learns not to trust anyone and becomes relatively isolated in the face of authorities' inability and unwillingness to help. The author is so affected by these events, especially after learning that a credit card was opened in her name when she was just 11, that she later studies consumer sciences with a focus on identity theft. It is only while going through her mother's belongings after her untimely death that Betz-Hamilton begins to unravel the truth. This memoir has all the suspense and twists of a thriller; even as readers begin to suspect the truth, it still shocks. This bloodless true-crime tale is highly recommended for fans of books about con artists and family secrets. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Memoir of a life under the shadow of identity theft. Betz-Hamilton (Consumer Sciences/South Dakota State Univ.) grew up in the age before the internet, a time when it took considerable effort to assume another person's identity and exercise financial fraud under those auspices. For a time, her mother was given to buying cheap, "pointless" jewelry from TV shopping channels, hiding the fact from her father, but she was seemingly normal compared to others in the family. Since the identity thief seemed to follow them wherever they traveled, moving often to stay a step ahead of creditors, taking pains to hide their whereabouts, it became evident that someone within the family was the author of the plot. Was it the grandmother who "had long ago stopped taking her insulin"? Grandma's boyfriend, who made a career of sitting on the porch? Some other relative? The payoff, a financial version of the movie Halloween, is surprising indeed, and it opens onto a world of mental illness on the part of adults and a life of bewildered, anxious is olation on the part of a child who bore no blame in the matter. As the author writes, "recalling the phoneless house of my teenage years, I began to realize how especially damning it had been to lose that connection to the outside world." Betz-Hamilton has since become a specialist on identity theft, and her notes on such matters as how debt is traded back and forth between credit card companies and collection agencies are revealing. Still, though the book is fairly short, it seems padded, and the writing is too often clunky: "There have been a few moments in my life when reality has skipped in front of me like a broken television"; "Grief waited like horses locked in a starting gate." Given that identity theft and fraud are both commonplace and comparatively easy to fix these days, readers might find the memoir dated as well. Though with an unexpected payoff, this is a tale in need of streamlining. Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.