Sydney Biddle Barrows shocked the old New York families when she was arrested for running an escort agency in the early eighties. Nicknamed "The Mayflower Madam" by the tabloids because her family had come over on the mayflower, Sydney shot from relative obscurity to being the most recognised face in New York.

Coming from a background in the fashion industry, Sydney's first experience in the sex industry was working as a phone operator for an escort agency, but she soon realised that it could be done much more successfully, and more ethically, if she ran her own.

Her escort agency, Cachet, ran for over five years without any major problems and was very successful. Her girls were the elite of New York, as were their clients, and she applied basic, sound business techniques to the agency until she was arrested.

As she states often in the book she wrote with William Novak, what were the police doing wasting money chasing her when she was hurting no one and there were no problems? Ultimately this is a very interesting book about the experiences of a very intelligent woman, not a story about a criminal exploiting people, and the story speaks for itself.