Recently, I had the pleasure of reading The Don Con, a comic crime thriller that is being released on April 1st by Pace Press. The central character, Joey Volpe, is a down-on-his-luck actor whose greatest claim to fame is having played a small role as a mobster on The Sopranos. To leverage that glint of stardom, Joey has taken to signing autographs at pop-culture fan conventions, which seems like a reasonable—and harmless—way to earn some much-needed cash.
That all changes when a real gangster, Tony Rosetti, appears in Joey’s autograph line and extorts him into taking part in a plan to rob celebrities at the next fan con. Everything seems to go Rosetti’s way, until Joey hooks up with an even more scheming crew of criminals and exacts a cleverly concocted form of revenge against Rosetti.
Here, the author of The Don Con, Richard Armstrong, responds to some questions about the inspiration for the book, its sharp revenge plot, the role of Shakespeare in the story, and more.
B.C. I love that the gangsters in the book choose celebrities at fan conventions as targets for robbery schemes. What inspired you to make fan cons the focus of a criminal operation in particular and a novel in general?
R.A. I have an old friend who was one of the principal cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation. One night, my wife and I were having dinner with him and I asked him what he was doing these days. He told me he was directing a lot of network television shows. But then he said that some of his income came from signing autographs at fan conventions. Until that moment, I didn’t even know what a fan convention was! My friend told me about how he went to his first Star Trek convention and was amazed at how much cash he brought home. His pockets were stuffed with money! Not long after that dinner, I asked myself the classic “what if” question. I said to myself, “What if somebody tried to steal all that cash from the celebrities at a fan convention?” And that’s how The Don Con was born.
B.C. The tragicomic aspects of the novel are really fun and engaging. On the (mostly) tragic side, we have mob boss Tony Rosetti extorting Joey Volpe into making the robbery schemes a reality. (Another tragic element is Joey’s troubled marriage.) On the more comic side, Joey is a classically trained Yale School of Drama grad whose only qualifications for being a fan-con celebrity are an if-you-blinked-you-missed-it appearance on The Sopranos and a role in another (quickly canceled) gangster show. Did you envision the novel as a tragicomedy from the start? Or did that aspect of the book kind of blossom as you developed the storylines and characters?
R.A. I saw it as a comedy thriller from the beginning. I like thrillers and I like satire. So I have a tendency to fuse the two together. Unfortunately, “satirical thriller” is not a very common or popular genre. Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiassen are the only two successful novelists I know who work in this particular corner of the literary world. So sometimes it’s difficult to explain to agents, editors, and journalists exactly what kind of novel this is. But I’ve been fortunate that most people who’ve read it seem to enjoy it—even if they don’t know quite how to describe it!
B.C. Speaking of Joey’s classical training, he’s a huge fan of Shakespeare, and throughout the novel, he quotes lines from the Bard that are appropriate to certain scenes or conflicts. Why do you think that Shakespeare’s works dovetail so well with the story and characters in The Don Con?
R.A. I’m an avid fan of Shakespeare, and I’m always struck by how timely (or timeless) it is. I just saw King Lear on Broadway a few days ago, and there are lines in that play that are so appropriate to our current political and societal situation you’d think they were written yesterday. [EXAMPLE: “Tis the plague of our times when mad men lead the blind.”] Shakespeare is like The Godfather in that regard. You can always find a quotation that is perfectly suited to whatever is happening in your life at any given moment. I drive my wife crazy quoting from Shakespeare and The Godfather. So I decided to give that annoying habit to the protagonist of The Don Con. In fact, if I had to pick the overall theme of The Don Con, it’s this: “All that glitters is not gold.” One of my early titles of the book, in fact, was Glitter.
B.C. As I mentioned in the intro, Joey—along with some sharp-minded schemers he meets in a minimum-security prison—plot a smart (and really funny) act of vengeance against Tony Rosetti. What, in your opinion, is key to making a vengeance story succeed? Did you encounter any challenges in having this aspect of the novel work to your liking?
R.A. I’m sure you’re familiar with the old saying that there are only about a dozen different story plots in literature. Well, revenge is one of them, and it’s probably my favorite. Maybe it’s because there are so many people I’d like to get vengeance on, but I’m too law-abiding (or too cowardly?) to do it in real life. So I get some kind of vicarious satisfaction by writing novels about vengeance. Is it difficult? No, it’s actually fairly easy, because it’s a well-worn story structure. Your protagonist has been wronged in some way. He gets angry. He thinks about how he can get back at the person who wronged him. Then he executes his plan. Hopefully, along the way, he realizes that getting revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
B.C. What sort of research did you do while planning or drafting the novel?
R.A. In The Don Con, the vengeance consists of the protagonist running an elaborate con game against the villain. So I read a lot of books and articles on con artists and how they operate. The non-fiction book The Big Con by David Mauer was particularly helpful because he explains how con games work on a step-by-step basis. When the time came to spring the con game, all I really had to do is follow the steps outlined in Mauer’s book. The protagonist also spent two years in a federal prison. Fortunately, I don’t have any personal experience with that! So I did a lot of internet research to find out exactly what prison life is like—particularly minimum security, which is quite different from most of what people think they know about prison.
B.C. The book references a lot of mob shows, books, and movies. Were any of these especially important or influential for you, either as an inspiration for this work or as a model for telling compelling stories?
R.A. As I mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of The Godfather. I’ve watched the first two movies at least a hundred times each. (Like most aficionados, I don’t care much for the third film.) At this point, I could probably recite most of the first two movies word-for-word without being prompted. I was also a big fan of The Sopranos. I’ve probably seen each episode a dozen times. The main character of The Don Con is an actor who had a very small role on the The Sopranos and now he makes money signing autographs at fan conventions. Star Trek also plays a significant role in the story, because Star Trek is such an important part of the fan convention business. But ironically, I never cared much for Star Trek—even though I had a good friend in the cast! Having said that, this is not “fan fiction” by any means. The characters and plot are entirely my own invention and sprang entirely from my own imagination.
B.C. I could see The Don Con as the introductory book in a series. Do you have any plans for a sequel?
R.A. A couple of people have asked if I’m planning a sequel. I don’t normally think in terms of sequels. It’s a pity, because writing a series is a good idea when it comes to the “business” of being a novelist. Unfortunately, I don’t tend to think along those lines. Every story is self-contained in my mind, and when I type “The End” I’m done with it. But if I sell a million copies of The Don Con, I may have to reconsider!
B.C. Is there anything else that you’d like to say about your book, your writing process, or anything else?
R.A. I’ll give you the best piece of advice I know about writing fiction. Always stop working for the day when you’re really excited about what you’re writing and you know exactly where your story is going next. Why? Because it will be easy to pick up where you left off the next morning!
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":▪ Books, movies, and television shows that feature organized crime or criminal schemes, such as The Godfather, The Sopranos, Ocean’s 11, and The Bank Job
▪ Comedy and satire
▪ Vengeance stories
▪ Fan conventions
