RUSE

A memoir of a career in corporate espionage.

After finishing college, Kerbeck decided he did not want to continue in the family business, to the disappointment of his father. Instead, he chose to move to New York to pursue a career in acting. Struggling to make it, he needed a side gig to pay the bills. A friend mentioned his new “phone job,” and soon, Kerbeck was working out of apartments trying to convince assistants of large corporations to provide him with confidential employee information. Headhunters would then buy this information about the structure of a company in order to poach their employees. In intriguing and unsettling detail, the author shares many of the ploys and angles he and his co-workers developed in order to gain this information, including competitions among the employees. Unfortunately, the narrative loses momentum when Kerbeck begins plotting his career as a B-level actor, sharing details about his auditions, trouble getting acting roles, and brushes with celebrities, including George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and O.J. Simpson. As the story proceeds, the author alternates discussions of his two careers, noting how he continually vowed to quit the con job if he became a successful actor. However, as Kerbeck became more financially successful at the ruse, he found his ability to follow through difficult. “The world of corporate spying is shady but lucrative,” he writes, “and I am one of the best….As a professional telephone liar—the last of a dying breed—I operate in a shadow market pursuing corporate intelli­gence worth billions of dollars to the top firms in the cutthroat world of international finance.” Eventually, however, Kerbeck became a victim of the same game. Though family members express concern for his dishonest career choices, he continues to feel little to no remorse for them. Reflecting on his career, he writes, “on my most generous days I tend to think of rusing as a crime without a victim.”

A dissatisfying story full of big egos and few redemptive elements.