Gary Indiana: Depraved Indifference

First published in 2001, ‘Depraved Indifference’ is the third of Gary Indiana’s famed crime trilogy now being reissued by Semiotext(e). Inspired by the virtuoso con artistry of mother-and-son criminals Sante and Kenneth Kimes, Depraved Indifference follows Evangeline Slote, a dead ringer for Elizabeth Taylor “so compulsive she grifts herself when she runs out of other people” through the circus of calamity that her compulsions invoke. Evangeline, or “Evelyn Carson, “Princess Shah Shah,” among other pseudonyms, accompanied by her alcoholic husband Warren and fanatically devoted son Devin, moves from Las Vegas to Hawaii to Nassau in a maelstrom of forgery and fraud that constantly threatens to come undone. When Warren dies, Evangeline and her son embark upon an ever more brazen series of grifts, frauds, and crimes. Thriving on chaos, a master of manipulation and seduction, Evangeline concocts the scheme to end all schemes—which may take a murder to complete.