' Of all the gifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat, ' wrote David Maurer, a proposition he definitively proved in The Big Con. A professor of linguistics who specialised in underworld argot, Maurer won the trust of hundreds of swindlers. They let him in on not simply their language, but their folkwrys & the astonishingly complex & elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed & dishonesty were 'taken off'
- i. e., cheated
- of thousands upon thousands of dollars. The products of amazing ingenuity, crack timing & attention to every last detail, these 'big cons', as thoroughly scripted & rehearsed as any Hollywood production, richly deserve Maurer's description as 'the most effective swindling device which man has ever invented. ' The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo (the write, the rag, the pay-off, ropers, shills, the cold poke & the convincer) & indeliable characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom-Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie & Larry the Lug). First published in 1940, The Big Con makes compelling reading whilst being the most authentic & utterly authoritative study on the con artist & his game.