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Len Deighton
Only When I Larf
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This paperback edition 2011
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd in 1968
ONLY WHEN I LARF. Copyright © Len Deighton 1967. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011
Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007385867
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007450862 Version: 2017-08-22
There is an ancient saying among the peoples of
Mesopotamia, ‘Four fingers stand between truth and lies’, and if you hold your hand to your face you will find that measurement to be the distance between the eye and the ear.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Cover designer’s note
Introduction
1. Bob
2. Liz
3. Silas
4. Bob
5. Liz
6. Silas
7. Bob
8. Liz
9. Bob
10. Silas
11. Liz
12. Bob
13. Liz
14. Silas
15. Bob
16. Liz
17. Silas
18. Bob
About the Author
Other Books by Len Deighton
About the Publisher
Cover designer’s note
Prompted by seeing the renderings of my two murals for Cunard’s new ship, Queen Elizabeth, Len Deighton suggested that I illustrate some of the covers of this next quartet of re-issues. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to draw once again, as it has been well over thirty years since my days as a regular illustrator for the Sunday Times.
Initially, it was intended that the cover design for Only When I Larf would also feature an illustration but sometimes, during the evolution of a design, another approach presents itself that causes one to change tack, and so it was here.
When I was first considering how I might illustrate the cover, a trip up to Larry Edmunds’ famed cinema bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard had provided me with lobby cards from the film adaptation of Only When I Larf as reference for the trio of tricksters. I had decided that the background would be Manhattan’s former Pan Am building on Park Avenue, based upon a photograph I had taken on my very first visit to the US in the 1960s. On my return to England I took the helicopter to Kennedy airport from the building’s roof. My trip was actually around the same time of the book’s main characters’ helicopter flight – I could well have bumped into them!
But as I developed this idea I also became struck by how money plays such an important role in Only When I Larf, it is all that Silas, Liz and Bob are interested in. Just as the super rich victims, or ‘marks’, are the kind of people who are ‘made of money’ so I thought that this is what the three confidence tricksters aspire to. I recalled a childhood memory of making paper chains at Christmas and this quickly led to making a dollar-bill paper chain out of the three hustlers, with Liz in the middle of the two men in more ways than one. In addition to the A-line skirt, Liz sports a Susan B Anthony dollar coin for a head, whereas Silas and Bob only merit a half-dollar, perhaps an indication of the relative worth of each character.
The choice of font for the book’s title was inspired in part by the Pan Am livery; its breezy blue and bold lettering being so suggestive of the optimistic, confident period of the 1960s in which this story is set.
The two $1,000,000 notes on the back cover were given to me some time ago on condition that I did not go to a bank and try to cash them! My old British passports came in to play again with a touch of Photoshopping by my wife Isolde. She carefully switched the name of the traveller to one of many aliases employed by Silas. From Santiago, Chile came the period Pan Am airline ticket plus a cocktail swizzle stick for the three confidence tricksters’ ill-deserved in-flight cocktails!
A contemporary NYC subway token decorates the book’s spine. Observant readers will notice that each of the spines in this latest quartet of reissues features a metallic object; a subtle visual link that draws together four books written and set in very different times and places.
I have taken the photograph for this book’s back cover with my Canon 5D camera.
Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI
Hollywood 2011
Introduction
The ideas in this story were planted many years before I began writing it and its format endured many radical changes. After completing my military service as an RAF photographer I won a grant to study illustration and graphic design at St Martin’s School of Art in Charing Cross Road, London, where I had studied briefly before my RAF service. To supplement my ex-service grant I took photographs for my fellow students and for the staff too. It was in the early nineteen fifties and photography was not the universal accomplishment that has come with fully automatic cameras and digital technology. Although it was a hand to mouth existence I scraped up enough money to rent one room in Soho and became a resident of that lively district of central London. Foreigners abounded: Mozart lived in Frith Street, Canaletto in Beak Street and Karl Marx in Dean Street, just around the corner.
At 10 Moor Street I rented the tiny back room at the top. The ground floor was occupied by a man’s shop that specialized in American-style clothes, e.g. wide-brimmed fedoras, brightly coloured ties and Bogart-style trench coats. It was about as near to St Martin’s School of Art as it was possible to live and it was cheap. With a chair that unfolded to become a bed, I used it as a stopover during the week and visited my parents at weekends. There was always a warm welcome and my mother was an outstanding cook who did a lot of my laundry, too. Life would have been hard without those two wonderful parents. It was the