It features Paul (Paulie) Shanahan, a Bostonian, who had moved to Europe in his role a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).
A nomad all his life, Lithgow was in Rochester, NY near the end of World War II, where he appeared in amateur productions such as the glib cockney scoundrel in an amateur production of the English comic melodrama Ladies in Retirement, produced by the Rochester Community Players.
His book Jabez: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Scoundrel, a biography of the Victorian era politician and swindler Jabez Balfour, was shortlisted for the Saga Award for Wit, also known as the Silver Booker, as well as the Whitbread Book Award for biography.
A scoundrel claiming to be the long-lost but rightful Duke of Bridgewater appears in the 1885 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, which is set before the American Civil War.
Ian Spence and Howard Wainer in 2001 describe Playfair as "engineer, political economist and scoundrel" while "Eminent Scotsmen" calls him an "ingenious mechanic and miscellaneous writer."