Jack McGreary is a child of the Depression. Born to a gullible Scotsman and a Finnish mother who died when he was a child, Jack’s future looks as dusty as the storms which blow into his rundown home town, Paradise Flats, slap bang in the middle of nowhere. The local library is the saving of Jack. His lust for the disapproving librarian’s daughter turns him into an autodidact who takes lessons in love from Ovid as he desperately tries to catch her eye. Then one day two accomplished con artists, Virgil and Miss Rose, blow into town. Jack watches, spellbound, as Virgil works a change trick with each of the town’s shopkeepers, pocketing more than most men in Paradise Flats make in a month within half an hour. Jack catches on to the trick, aiding and abetting the admiring Virgil who spots a promising recruit and soon two cons become three.
Elaborate and ingenious con tricks in 1930s America
Spanish Fly takes its readers on a ride through the American southwest as the jazz loving Virgil and Miss Rose work a seemingly endless stream of gullible marks. The con tricks are intriguing and as Ferguson points out in his postscript to the novel all were commonly worked in the 1930s. Jack’s father is a victim of the Drake con in which marks were sold highly ornate certificates said to entitle them to a share of Sir Francis Drake’s riches, supposedly being disputed through the English courts. The purchasers were sworn to secrecy, told that they would forfeit their share of the fortune should they break their vow.
Sharp yet vulnerable the colourful Virgil is portrayed as an honourable man despite his appetite for swindling. The enigmatic Miss Rose provides some sexual tension although her character never quite comes alive in the way that Virgil’s does. Jack, who narrates the novel, is the star of the show: intelligent, clear minded and ingenious. Ferguson clearly fell in love with the acuity, outrageous nerve and sheer ingenuity of the period's con artists and the result is that at times the novel can read like a catalogue of cons. What saves it is its humour, colourful descriptions and the magnificent double bluff of its ending. Rumbling away in the background of Spanish Fly is the dull hum of the Second World War gearing up in Europe, the significance of which for our narrator only becomes clear on the final page.
Spanish Fly by Will Ferguson (2007) is published under the title Hustle in the UK.
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