The mother of one of my pals from university was an incredible woman. When I met her she was in her seventies, tall, extremely elegant, terribly witty.
Her husband was a judge, one day we got to talk about crime¹.
While she was tough on crime, she admitted she admired very much pick-pockets (“They need nerves of steel to do what they do on a crowded bus!”) and big time con-men.
Not the kind that swindle old ladies out of their pension, mind you. Big time con-men, the sort that can drain up a company accounts and vanish into tin air.
“It takes a lot of intelligence to do that,” she said.
I have to agree.
And as a lover of crime novels, I like grifter and heist stories much more than straight murder mysteries.

Mind you, I like a homicide investigation like the next guy, but a good, large scale, complicated swindle is my fave sort of thing.
It’s a noirish thing, really. I think the first book of this sort I ever read was Len Deighton‘s Only when I larf, and then Jim Thompson’s The Grifters came following suit. Continue reading →