Take Down by James Swain follows a cheater and his crew as they scam casinos in Las Vegas, and he is then hired/blackmailed to protect a new casino from all the other cheats in town.
Two things make Take Down different from the other James Swain novels. The casino Billy is protecting (a wide open candy store) is run by gangsters. Most of the Tony Valentine novels are more about the plot and the cons than the characterizations. Here, James Swain does a very neat job of drawing convincing villains, who are understandable in their motivations. Ike and T-Bird are somewhat sympathetic, and somewhat stupid, often played for comedic effect, but I didn't find it overdone. I found Shaz Doucette understandable, and also genuinely frightening. The villains, more than the mechanics of cheating, gave the novel its pacing and excitement.
The second aspect is that the protagonist is a con man. Unlike the Tony Valentine novels, Take Down is told from the perspective of a cheater. It's similar to James Swain's other novels, and includes some of the same cons and tricks. In many ways, it's easy to forget that the protagonist here is a cheat, as opposed to a detective dedicated to catching cheats.
I like stories about con men. I enjoy reading about the con, I like the cleverness, I like to think about whether it would be possible to carry off the con in reality, and I look at it a bit like a magic trick. I don't tend to think of con men as particularly bad in the criminal food chain, particularly because it seems to be a trope that con men don't carry guns and avoid violence. I also tend towards the idea that the con man takes an amount that won't leave the mark too poor, and ideally in such a way that the mark can't complain about the theft (usually because the mark is engaged in illegal activity). So fleecing people who think they're ripping off someone else seemed to me that the con man is like the Robin Hood of criminals.
James Swain hasn't taken this approach to con men and cheaters in his past novels. I've always had the sense that Tony Valentine takes pride in catching a cheater, that he has absolutely no doubt that the cheater is morally wrong, and never feels sympathy for the cheat.
It's an aspect of his character that, while it rings true in-story, has a hard time getting my sympathy in reality. I roll my eyes a bit at the thought that a casino might be losing money, and considered that the narrative intrusions about how bad cheating is for the gaming industry, and the inherent goodness and expertise of the Nevada Gaming Commission to be authorial recompense for giving Mr. Swain access to some of the insider information on casinos.
So I was surprised to find Take Down featuring a cheater as the protagonist, and was curious to see how Mr. Swain would manage to prevent him from becoming too sympathetic a character, or if he would fall in line with the usual con man Robin Hood sympathies (perhaps ripping off a gangster-owned casino creates its own moral justification).
I think Mr. Swain did a very good job of showing a con man for what he is, for why he's morally wrong, while doing it subtly enough that it's easy to miss the cues as the reader roots for Billy's success.
The key to being a con man, I think I have to acknowledge, is a lack of conscience. If a con man feels sorry for the suckers, he can't uphold the con. (Paul Newman learns this in The Color of Money). The con man has to have no sympathy or empathy with his victims... and the entire world forms his potential victim pool. Accordingly, the con man is exclusively interested in his own welfare. As I indicated, Mr. Swain builds it very subtly, occasionally letting Billy even convince himself that he's justified in ignoring the welfare of anyone who means anything to him.
For myself, I was genuinely surprised at the ending of the novel and the decision Billy makes. It's consistent with his character as we've seen it throughout the novel, it's just not consistent with what I wanted to believe his character was throughout the novel. I've tried to reconsider his actions, or come up with some other justification (he's young, he didn't think it through) but I'm forced to come back to the realization that he's a cheat and looks only to his own self interest without the slightest twinge of conscience. To me, that was much more effective than authorial sidebars on the harm caused by cheaters, and one that will influence how I look at stories about con men going forward.
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