Con men...

[fajrdrako]

One thing I love in storytelling is a protagonist who is a com man, especially if they end up being heroic, especially if their heroism is inadvertent or reluctant. Variations on the Trickster as a character. Thinking about Neal Caffrey of White Collar, who is a fine example of the type, I thought I'd make a list of my other favourite con men in fiction.

The list actually overlaps with other lists, like pirates - I'm making it a point to keep the two categories apart.

My favourite fictional con men

1. Rick Blaine, in the movie Casablanca.
   played by Humphrey Bogart. Rick doesn't appear to be a con man at first - he runs a wartime night club and minds his own business. But we soon learn that Rick knows and uses everyone on both sides of the law, and plays fast a loose with the truth for his own ends. And he's utterly heroic, but don't let him hear you say so.
   
   
2. Oda Mae Brown, in the movie Ghost. Played by Whoopie Goldberg. Her con is spiritualism - and, as is classic in these stories, her role begins when her con becomes a reality, and she really can talk to a ghost. And then has to work with him,out of her league but rising to the occasion.
   
   
3. Eugenides, the thief of Eddis. Fast-talking, incorrigible, stubborn - Eugenides is consistently more than he seems, and every new revelation is a joy. To say anything more about the (wonderful) plot of the Megan Whalen Turner books would be to say too much.
   
   
4. Captain Jack Harkness. Played by John Barrowman. A fifty-first century adventurer who tumbled into the worls of Doctor Who, and who tried to con the Doctor - a exercise in futility. He became one of the Doctor's most devoted companions. And that was just the beginning...
   
   Jack continues to save the world, as his leadership of Torchwood was a sort of con in itself - above governments, above accountability, a facade for an improvised global defense project? And add to the mix: besides being clever and widely experienced in the ways of aliens and man, Jack is flirtatious and omnisexual.
   
   Jack is just about perfect.
   
   
5. Professor Harold Hill, in The Music Man, played in the movie version by Robert Preston. He pretended to be a music teacher and by doing so, with the false promise of starting up a band in River City, Iowa, he brought a lot of joy to the children and residents. But he knew nothing about music.
   
   As the plot goes, his deception is discovered and then kept hidden by the local librarian, Marian Paroo. And though there's romance between them, what I most love is that there's no hint that he'll be reformed by the love of a good woman - on the contrary, Marian isthe onewho has changed, becoming less intolerant.
   
   
6. Gordon Krantz, in The Postman, by David Brin. A vagrant in a post-apocalyptic America finds the old corpse of a postman, with uniform intact. He steals the uniform. In the next town he reaches, the townsfolk believe he is a postman, with the inescapable implication that there is a post office and an administration behind it. So little by little, Krantz's lie grows - and so does the reality.
   
   Do youself a favour and ignore the Kevin Kostner movies based on this book. The book is terrific.
   
   
7. Mal Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion, in Firefly - the Captain of Serenity. A ship's Captain and sometimes smuggler, his best jobs are heists. He fits different roles as necessary (including that flowered bonnet.) His agenda is essentially political - he was on the losing side of a war, and the establishment is the villain here.
   
   
8. Moist Von Lipwig, whose plot in Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, is oddly analogous to that of The Postman. Con man moist is caught for, and convicted of, bond forgery. The Patrician gives him a choice: death, or the job of Postmaster.
   
   
9. Miles Vorkosigan, in the novels by Lois McMaster Bujold. Miles is the wealthy scion of the aristocratic ruling house of the planet Barrayar, but that isn't how he made his career. He made his career by bluffing his way onto a spaceship to save a suicidal pilot; and one sting led to another - one tall tale led to another - and somehow he was the self-appointed General of a mercenary army, the fate of empires in his hands. And no easy way to back down.
   
   There's nothing ordinary about Miles: along with a brilliantly inprovisational mind and a tendency to hyperactivity, Miles is short, hunchbacked, and brittle-boned. And all the more heroic for it.
   
   
10. Dean Winchester, in the TV show Supernatural. Played by Jansen Ackles. Dean drives around America, living by credit card fraud and a variety of lies, to save the world from demons (and angels), to find and save his father, and to protect his younger brother. A modern outlaw-hero.