The Montreal Gazette review of Spanish Fly

Bruce Ward

Medical quack John "Goat Glands" Brinkley made a fortune in the 1930s by transplanting tiny slivers of goat gonads into the human scrotum. He claimed the operation would restore male virility and fertility.

By the time the American Medical Association revoked his licence, Brinkley had carried out thousands of operations. (Some of his gonad patients reported strange desires to chew sprouts and nibble on tin cans.)

But the AMA didn't beat Brinkley, who built a radio station across the Texas border in Mexico and stayed in business. XER transmitted 100,000 watts of power and could be heard all the way to Canada. Wolfman Jack made his name on XER in the '50s, blasting R&B and rock 'n' roll long after Brinkley's death. And ZZ Top hymns the station's format -- "Country jesus hillbilly blues/ that's where I learned my licks" -- in Heard It On The X.

Brinkley is one of the real-life swindlers who help make Spanish Fly, Will Ferguson's second novel, such a solid read.

Jack McGreary, the 19-year-old narrator and trainee confidence man in the book, is a fast learner. Brinkley's success teaches Jack about the power of the placebo effect, which he uses as the basis of his aphrodisiac scam -- the Spanish fly of the title.

Jack has a knack for numbers and a soul-deep desire to get out of Paradise Flats, a Southwest dust bowl town dying in the Great Depression. He comes across a con in mid-execution and hooks up with Virgil Ray and the lovely Rose, the pair pulling the swindle. And just like that, he's tearing out of town with them in a sharp new Nash Ambassador.

Jack thrills to the con and absorbs its constituent parts: the angle, the pitch, the close and the pay off. He gets an education from Virgil in the badger game, the sweetheart scam and plenty of other smoke-and-mirror scams including flashing the "Mish roll" -- a bundle of fake money with genuine bills on the top and bottom of the stack.

Virgil's syllogism goes like this: You can't cheat an honest man. There are no honest men.

There aren't many smart ones, either, who can't be swindled by Jack, Virg and Rose playing their roles as the roper, the switch and the getaway. Jack falls for the beguiling Rose, but he's sharp enough to listen to the gut feeling that warns him somebody in the love triangle is getting set up.

"People will believe any damn fool thing you tell them, as long as you say it with the right authority ... " Virgil tells Jack.

But the book has more to offer than slick scams and how they work. Ferguson is at his most lyrical in describing the destruction caused by the "black blizzards." The people of Paradise Flats wake up each morning after a long night of howling winds to a world of dust. The weathered barn, the fence posts, the pick-up truck -- everything is covered with a thick layer of dust. The land that had sustained them for so many years is vanishing.

The coming of the automobile has opened up hick town America to con artists. "Once was, you were hostage to a train schedule," Virgil says. "Now you can get in and out quick as a blink. The automobile makes getaways a done deal."

Jack starts to think that conning people is merely the way of the world. "Maybe America was just one long con ... Maybe the game was gaffed and the bunco artist was simply a one-eyed man in the land of the blind."

His father has the romantic notion that Jack should head for Canada, where he can join the army and become a hero fighting the Nazis. That strikes Jack as the biggest con of all. He would rather separate suckers from their cash than get shot at to save the British Empire.

Ferguson made his reputation with How To Be A Canadian and Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, and has has won two Leacock awards for his satirical swipes at our national character. In Spanish Fly, he shows a flair for historical detail and pop culture.

The reader learns there were "detoxification" colonic treatments on offer back in the 1930s, and baldness cures, too, and scientific breast developers. A cure for everything, then as now, except gullibility.

In one of their first scams, Virgil and Jack pose as G-men investigating bank fraud. They convince a preacher's wife to withdraw her money from the bank and hand it over so it can be "dusted for evidence."

Outlandish, right? But the bank inspector scam lives on. A few weeks ago in Perth, a con man talked a resident of a seniors' residence into making a sizable withdrawal and turning it over to him. The victim believed the money was being used in a police investigation.

Somewhere, "Goat Glands" Brinkley must be smiling.

October, 2007
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