Con Ed
At the start of Klein's amusing debut, one-time con man Kip Largo,  who's been working at a dry cleaner since completing an eight-year stretch in  prison for fraud, is intrigued when the gorgeous wife of Silicon Valley  billionaire Edward Napier asks him to help her steal her husband's money, but  not intrigued enough to follow through—at least not until he discovers that  his not-bright son, Toby, owes several hundred thousand dollars to the Russian  mob. Deciding that this is his chance to finally do right by his family, Kip  sets about organizing a large-scale swindle to lure in Napier, all too aware  that if he fails to pull it off, he and Toby (and the con's other participants)  will all be killed. While the plot and characters tend to be by the numbers,  the author's background information on how cons work is enormously  entertaining.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.