The Master Con Man: The True Adventures of Slippery Syd Gottfried

Robert KyriakidesHeadpress/Critical Vision, 12.99Jeremy Fleming

It would be surprising if Guy Ritchie has not already snaffled the film rights to this book - it is right up his street.

Written as an autobiographical memoir, the book is in fact penned entirely by London-based solicitor Robert Kyriakides.

He acted for 'Slippery Syd' Gottfried on non-criminal matters, and composed the book using tape recordings and notes gleaned from Gottfried.

The book opens with a set-piece that could have been lifted straight from 'Scarface', with Gottfried's half-Brazilian ten-year-old daughter, Karla, having her face blown off one night in Miami.

'There was so much blood.

And her dead eyes were open.

Those dead eyes stared at me out of her face without a nose.'

From here the book goes back to trace Gottfried's extraordinary career - from merchant seaman, to army cook before graduating to petty thief, major robber, prisoner, casino fiddler, diamond heister, racetrack grifter, and on the list goes.

His amazing story is brought vividly to life by the autobiographical tone, which could be corny and exaggerated, but comes across very naturally with a dark humorous twist.

It is very well written.

Like good crime fiction, the reader is drawn to sympathise with Gottfried's sheer inventiveness and capacity to deceive.

He is an elaborate and careful huckster who clearly thought scams through professionally.

His trade mark con is to identify a weakness in those he fiddles, hence the orthodox Jewish diamond traders of Antwerp are targeted because of their trust-based, word-of-honour culture.

It would be too damaging for them to admit to each other that they have been swindled, enabling Gottfried to work through many of them with his elaborate heists.

Another scam is a penis-enlargement operation - perpetrated by a South African surgeon with Gottfried procuring punters under an alias of 'the Reverend Goodchild' - which leaves some of its desperate patients with less than they bargained for.

Understandably, they are not up for a public fight about being short-changed.

But despite the charm and the humour, the reader is warned early about the key ingredient that, added to his inventiveness, gave Gottfried the edge - unbridled violence.

Of the inglorious end to his brief stint in the merchant navy, he recalls: 'Before the chief [officer] knew what was going on I kicked him, hit him, punched and bit him and I beat the crap out of him.

He had no crap left.

Eventually, the other sailors restrained me and put me in a straightjacket.

If they hadn't done that I would have killed him.'

In the 1980s Gottfried bought a club in Soho called the Marie Lloyd, a small drinking den which is the scene for one of his comeuppances.

After dating a 'beautiful' hooker, Gottfried finds that she is passionately jealous when he talks to other women.

One day while driving along, Gottfried eyes up a girl walking alongside.

Liz shows herself to be the match of her man: 'She grabbed hold of my hair pulled it and then pushed my face down on to the steering wheel of the car with as much force as she could.

She knocked me out and when I came to I found myself bleeding, looking through a broken windscreen at apples and vegetables - I had crashed the car into a greengrocers' shop.'

This is a great read about a real con man and - despite a bit of exaggeration and blag - there is something very believable about it, including the stereotypical crook's mother, who throws hot water bottles filled with whisky, gin and vodka over prison walls to help her son 'make do' inside.

Lets hope that if Mr Ritchie gets his hands on the book it does not transmogrify into a dismal 'geezers with sharp one-liners' film presented in pop-video, speed-shot format.

It is worth more than that.