Only When I Larf

I bought this at the end of 2014, with a dim memory of having seen perhaps part of the film long ago. It's not the kind of thing I normally read, and I didn't get around to reading it until 2024. Then I read the introduction, the first six chapters, the last three chapters, and didn't feel a need to read the middle nine chapters.

It's a study of the psychology and methods of a mostly successful gang of three confidence tricksters—Silas, Liz, and Bob—and the sexual and other tensions between them.

The book is copyright 1967, and the film was released very promptly in 1968—co-produced by the author, though he didn't write the screenplay. I lived through the 1960s as a child, and I've read a fair amount of science fiction written in the 1960s, but I haven't read much fiction set in the real 1960s, and it feels a bit odd now to be taken back to that time, when the Second World War was a relatively fresh memory and some of the slang in use was left over from the 1940s and 1950s.

The author, Len Deighton, was born in 1929, so he was about 38 by the time this book came out: younger than Silas, older than Bob and Liz.

The book is quite well and carefully written, but it's not the sort of book I really enjoy. The ending is OK but seems rather inconclusive and undramatic; perhaps the author wanted to say that stories don't have to end in triumph or disaster. I see from a synopsis that the film altered the ending in an attempt to add drama to it.