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The Sting and the Thomas Crown Affair are both fine examples of the crime caper story
where extraordinary events are bound to a sympathetic character or characters. In
The Sting, the sympathetic charcter is Gondorff who falls foulf of a 'Mafia' style
lord of the underworld played by Robert Shaw. Shaw's villain resents being taken advantage
of in a friendly game of poker and leans heavily on Gondorff to get his money
back. Gondorff realises that there is no way out for him unless the villain thinks
he is dead and when Gondorff is killed in front of him, he has to accept his losses
and walk away.
In the Thomas Crown Affair, the mix is different. Thomas Crown plays at insurance crime, not
because he needs the money but because of the vicarious pleasure he derives
from it by beating the best investigators that the insurance world can throw at him.
He commits a crime so devious that everyone woders how the crime was carried out. The
investigator suspects him but cannot prove anything. She has an affair with Thomas Crown
to get him to drop his guard. The result is that he pulls off another caper,
this time dropping hints of what he is going to do in order to see whether she will betray
him. Just as in The Sting, these are stories of sophisticated crimes which depend
on intelligence rather than violence.
In That Will Do Nicely, the main character, Tom Pascoe, locked into a loveless marriage,
is persuaded by his wife to throw a party for her. At the party, he catches his wife
having sex with a colleague from work. he throws them out and sues fir divorce. His
wife though, takes her revenge by aquiring a credit
card in his name and running up a huge debt on it. When he is faced with a bill he
can't pay and the bankruptcy that will surely follow, Pascoe seeks an alternative way out.
As far as he is concerned, he is being punished for something of which he is innocent.
So using the skills he has learnt in the printing, photographic and foreign exchange
industries, he decided to con the bank out of enough money to repay the debt. he creates
his own bank and Travelers Cheques. Little does he realise though that a crime which
involves losses to the US Treasury Department is automatically assigned to the American
Secret Service and this is just the start of his troubles.
Three great stories that depend on brain rather than brawn. The Sting, The Thomas Crown Affair
amd That Will Do Nicely.