George Randolph Chester was both an interpreter and a paradigm of the times in which he lived. He was a writer who rose to the top of his genre by creating potboilers about humorous, devious swindlers and well-mannered confidence men. Chester's fame burgeoned when his stories were serialized in such magazines as Collier's , Cosmopolitan, and the Saturday Evening Post, but his "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford" stories were primarily responsible for his great popular and financial success. The main character of the series, J. Rufus Wallingford, was an appealing villain who charmed women and made easy money by conning greedy, gullible investors.

A devotee of cigarettes, beer, and sauerkraut, Chester lived hard and worked hard, often producing several stories a week for the many magazines that published his work. Like his materialistic heroes, he spent his paychecks as fast as he earned them. In addition to his best-selling collection of stories...