Eliot Spitzer: the story that won’t die

If Eliot Spitzer thought the new year might allow him to forget the troubles of the past, he was wrong. The femme fatale responsible for running the prostitution ring which exposed the former New York governor as being a regular customer last year has published her memoirs.

The Manhattan Madam: Sex, Drugs, Scandal and Greed Inside America’s Most Successful Prostitution Ring has been penned by Kristin Davis and is a tell-all account of what went on behind the closed doors of the disgraced governor’s favourite brothel. Spitzer was a regular patron, infamously paying $1,000-an-hour for the services of his favourite girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupre (pictured) .

When he stepped down in March 2008, Spitzer retreated from public life, probably in the hope that all would soon be forgotten, but the seedy saga didn’t end there. Dupre reportedly sold her story for £2m to a US TV network and a Hollywood film studio and the Davis book threatens to shine a light on to the more sordid side of Wall St.

According to Davis, who was sentenced to four months in prison as a result of the Spitzer disclosure, a number of investment bankers from the companies at the heart of the current financial crisis made up a large swathe of her client list, allowing her to boast an annual turnover of $5 million. She claims she was “often invoicing on corporate credit cards”.

A further, more serious, book is expected from the investigative journalist Peter Elkind, commissioned last year by Penguin’s Portfolio imprint. Elkind was co-author of the 2003 bestseller, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.