Longform specialist Jeff Maysh has a penchant for telling genre-breaking stories about people with secret lives. There’s the mom who assumed her daughter’s identity to return to high school; the Michigan farmer who made millions smuggling rare Pez dispensers into the U.S.; the undercover cops whose sham marriage helped nab a dozen drug dealers.
And then there is the story of the Bombshell Bandit, Sandeep Kaur, a twentysomething Sikh nurse from Sacramento who robbed a series of banks to repay gambling debts.
Although his subjects could not appear more different, Maysh says that at their core, his stories are essentially the same.
“All of the people I write about are leading double lives, so I kind of know where to look,” Maysh said. “I’m just drawn to that kind of character, living a double life, and always trying to figure out why.”
It all began when Maysh was growing up in south London around the police and crime. When he was 14, a close family member, an undercover cop, was sent to prison, and Maysh visited him there often.
One thing I … Read More
