6 books like Catch Me If You Can
- Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale with Stan Redding — Abagnale's memoir delivers the raw material that Spielberg polished into charm, recounting his teena…
- The Confidence Men by Margalit Fox — Fox recounts how two British officers in a World War I Turkish prison camp faked a spiritual medium,…
- The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson — Johnson investigates a 2009 theft in which a young American flutist broke into a British natural his…
- The Grifters by Jim Thompson — Thompson's novel follows three con artists operating in 1950s California whose scams are small-time …
- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith — Highsmith's novel follows Tom Ripley as he assumes another man's identity in 1950s Italy, improvisin…
- American Kingpin by Nick Bilton — Bilton chronicles Ross Ulbricht's creation and operation of Silk Road, the dark web drug marketplace…
Picked for the feeling of Catch Me If You Can, not its genre. Each one is explained below. One movie isn’t much to go on: rate four more and the books are picked for you.
Why these books
Spielberg's film turns audacity into entertainment, following a con artist who stays one costume change ahead of the law. It treats deception as craft rather than sin, refusing to moralize while never quite endorsing the fraud. The pleasure is in watching someone improvise brilliance under pressure, using charm and quick thinking as survival tools. These books share that elastic morality and the thrill of watching intelligence weaponized against systems that seem unbeatable.
Catch Me If You Can
Abagnale's memoir delivers the raw material that Spielberg polished into charm, recounting his teenage years as a fake pilot, doctor, and lawyer who cashed millions in fraudulent checks. The tone is breezy and unrepentant, treating each new identity as a problem-solving exercise rather than a moral crisis. Where the film softens the edges with Hanks and DiCaprio's cat-and-mouse warmth, the book leans into the mechanics of the con: how to forge a Pan Am ID, how to talk your way past a pediatrics rotation, how to stay cool when the FBI closes in. It is a manual disguised as a memoir, written by someone who never quite apologizes for the adventure.
The Confidence Men
Fox recounts how two British officers in a World War I Turkish prison camp faked a spiritual medium, complete with Ouija board prophecies and elaborate coded maps, to engineer their escape. Like Catch Me If You Can, it turns deception into a high-wire act where the audience roots for the liars because the system they are cheating feels designed to crush them. The pleasure is in the preparation: every séance is rehearsed, every detail calibrated to exploit the captors' superstitions. Fox writes with the pacing of a heist film, revealing each layer of the con only after it has already worked. The moral stakes feel suspended because survival justifies the lie.
The Feather Thief
Johnson investigates a 2009 theft in which a young American flutist broke into a British natural history museum and stole hundreds of rare bird skins to sell to salmon fly-tiers. Like Catch Me If You Can, it tracks a man who commits an audacious crime for reasons that shift between need and compulsion, never quite settling into straightforward villainy. The thief is brilliant, meticulous, and weirdly sympathetic even as the damage he causes becomes clear. Johnson writes the investigation as a pursuit narrative, chasing leads across continents while the stolen feathers circulate through an underground market of obsessive hobbyists. The crime feels both absurd and serious, propelled by a subculture the rest of the world forgot existed.
The Grifters
Thompson's novel follows three con artists operating in 1950s California whose scams are small-time but their stakes are survival, not adventure. Like Catch Me If You Can, it treats deception as a learned skill and explores the exhaustion of maintaining a false front, though Thompson strips away Spielberg's lightness to reveal the grinding cruelty underneath. Roy Dillon runs short cons at racetracks, his mother Lilly skims from the mob, and his girlfriend Moira plays the long game with marks she cultivates over months. The prose is lean and merciless, structured around the inevitability of betrayal. Where Spielberg lets his conman grow a conscience, Thompson shows what happens when people who lie for a living try to trust each other.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Highsmith's novel follows Tom Ripley as he assumes another man's identity in 1950s Italy, improvising alibis and forging documents to sustain a life he was never meant to inhabit. Like Catch Me If You Can, it centers on a conman whose greatest talent is reading a room and becoming whoever the situation demands, slipping into new roles with unsettling ease. The pleasure is in watching Ripley think on his feet, solving logistical problems as they arise: how to fake a signature, how to explain an absence, how to make murder look like accident. Highsmith refuses to punish him for it, letting the imposture succeed where morality tales insist it must fail. The tone is cool and observational, tracking competence without endorsing cruelty.
American Kingpin
Bilton chronicles Ross Ulbricht's creation and operation of Silk Road, the dark web drug marketplace he ran under the alias Dread Pirate Roberts while federal agents spent years trying to identify him. Like Catch Me If You Can, it structures the story as a pursuit between a clever criminal and the investigators who slowly decode his methods, with each side escalating in response to the other's moves. Ulbricht is presented as a libertarian idealist whose technical brilliance lets him stay anonymous across continents, always one encryption layer ahead of the law. Bilton writes the investigation as procedural detective work: tracing Bitcoin, analyzing server logs, waiting for the one mistake that collapses the entire facade. The moral ambiguity holds because Ulbricht genuinely believed he was building something better.
Is Catch Me If You Can based on a book?
Catch Me If You Can is based on Frank W. Abagnale with Stan Redding’s memoir Catch Me If You Can.
What should I read if I loved Catch Me If You Can?
Start with Catch Me If You Can, The Confidence Men and The Feather Thief. 6 books on this page were picked for the feeling of Catch Me If You Can, not its genre, with a reason for each.
Which book is most like Catch Me If You Can?
Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale with Stan Redding. Abagnale's memoir delivers the raw material that Spielberg polished into charm, recounting his teenage years as a fake pilot, doctor, and lawyer who cashed millions in fraudulent checks.
These are for everyone who loved Catch Me If You Can. Want books picked for you?
Someone who loved Catch Me If You Can and My Neighbor Totoro reads different books from someone who loved Catch Me If You Can and Raiders of the Lost Ark. One movie isn’t much to go on. Rate four more — Catch Me If You Can already counts — and the books are picked for you.
Rate four more moviesOr read one book with friends — three of you rate movies, one book you’ll all like.