Fowler's End

Harlan Ellison In the worst, poorest, most benighted corner of London is Fowlers End, one of the most godforsaken spots on the face of the earth. It is here that young Daniel Laverock, starving and nearly penniless at the height of the Great Depression, takes the only job he can find: manager of the Pantheon Theater, a rundown old silent cinema owned by Sam Yudenow. Yudenow, an incorrigible swindler and one of the great comic grotesques in English literature, at first seems merely an amusing old fool, but Laverock soon discovers he is actually a despicable rogue. And when one of Yudenow's schemes finally goes too far, Laverock and his co-worker Copper Baldwin decide to teach him a lesson with a grand scheme of their own, with hilarious and unpredictable results.