Gold's Fools

From the award-winning author of Plunder (a New York Times Best Nonfiction of the Year) Gold’s Fools is the stranger-than-fiction investigation into a 80-year-old mystery of Nazi treasure and two best friends who are now willing to destroy each other to solve it.

It started with a tip—an astonishing claim about a hidden cache of Nazi gold in a Montreal basement. Glenn Feldman, a seasoned lawyer turned relentless--albeit unreliable--investigator, was certain he had cracked a decades-old mystery: that his former best friend and business partner, Irwin Lande, was secretly sitting on billions of dollars' worth of stolen treasure. The gold, Feldman alleged, had been smuggled into Canada by a long-dead relative of Lande’s: a man who was not who he claimed to be, but rather a notorious Nazi war criminal.

Kaiser agreed to take a quick look into Feldman’s claims. What began as a simple journalistic inquiry soon revealed itself as a bewildering web of obsession, betrayal, conspiracy, and high-stakes courtroom battles. The story grows more astounding with every turn: felonies, forged wills, secret bunkers, Nazi hunters, and a feud so all-consuming that it upends the lives of everyone involved.

And then: after years of frustrating dead-ends and personal accusations—Kaiser himself is more than once pulled into the court case—our intrepid narrator accomplishes the impossible and solves the almost century-old crime.

But Gold’s Fools is more than a twisty, riveting real-life mystery. It’s an important exploration of how history is remembered, manipulated, and mythologized—how our desire for justice, our fascination with treasure, and our shaky relationship with the past can distort the truth. In a world increasingly consumed by conspiracies, this is a story about belief and about the seductive power of the extraordinary.

Tautly written, deeply personal, and immensely satisfying, Gold’s Fools is a gripping investigative story where the greatest mystery isn’t just whether the gold exists—but why we so desperately want it to.