MixedThe Financial TimesPreston tells the story well ... Cheerfully recounting previously reported anecdotes, its strength is in telling the grand sweep of an extraordinary life ... Sometimes Preston’s tale is too tidy. He puts too much weight on Maxwell’s rivalry with Murdoch as the motivation for the calamitous US takeovers, and is too neat about claiming a convergence of threats (such as disclosures of bank share sales) on the day Maxwell died in discussing whether these might have prompted suicide ... Despite the book’s subtitle, it also conveys little suspense. It barely discusses the fraud itself...That is the real, still compelling and still relevant mystery. Nor does it discuss the impact — that public outcry forced banks to return much of the missing pension wealth and protections for the assets in pension funds were then tightened.
