And so to the book... I took this slim volume to read while I was travelling to and from Liverpool last week and it was a cracking read, the sort of book I could pick up for 5 minutes and read in litle bursts, thus reading much of it in two days of Easter laziness. The book opens with grifter Roy Dillon reeling from a slug to the stomach that subsequently almost kills him - it's a great opener and really grabbed me to read more. The book follows Roy's recovery, filling in his backstory along the way, and charts his relationship with his usually absent mother Lilly, just 14 years his senior, also a con artist within the field of horse racing, and with girlfriend Moira Langtry, who also turns out to be a fan of the long con. A nurse named Carol with a past in a concentration camp also appears for awhile before disappearing again. Roy's relationship with these two main women in his life is complicated, and his assault and recovery makes him reassess his grifting ways. The trouble is it's difficult to know who he can trust, and how he should or should not get out of the game. Thompson keeps the story zipping along in an unfussy style, drawing the reader into this grifting ménage a trois and making you care what happens to each of them. Unfortunately, the end ain't pretty. And another link with the film Choke shows itself as the book goes on, the main character has mummy issues, although Roy Dillon's are a little more Oedipal than Victor's...
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