As publishing scams go you couldn't make it up. Or you did.

It's the early 1970s and another chapter of rejection is closing on failed writer Clifford Irving (Gere), a "third rate Philip Roth knock-off".

Desperate for recognition and craving the literary limelight, he mischievously informs his publisher (Davis) that he's been approached by Howard Hughes.

It's a bold claim. The legendary recluse and multi-millionaire oil baron and movie mogul is on the wish-list of every book publisher...but is notorious for maintaining an unbreachable silence.

Yet he's told Clifford he wants him - a journeyman wordsmith in a rickety marriage - to ghost the memoirs of America's most mysterious man.

Aided by his amiable buddy Dick (Molina), what was once a harmless prank snowballs into a publishing sensation...albeit one unsupported by a shred of truth.

Clifford's trump card in this high risk game of duplicity is Hughes' total reluctance to confirm or deny anything, fuelled by his fear of appearing in public.

Underpinning the con is the publishing world's marked reluctance to disbelieve every lying word he says, such is the dollar opportunity of the Hughes memoir.

Richard Gere's mesmeric performance - not a million miles from his crooked cop in Internal Affairs - is writ large in a spirited yarn of intrigue and deception.

There's also a pleasing intimation of something darker when it appears Irving begins to believe his own fiction as the truth closes in.

Molina is excellent as the increasingly shakey pal Dick while Marcia Gay Harden convinces as the artist wife who is reluctantly drawn into the web.

It's a solid, often amusing film where director Lasse Hallström has reined in his whimsical leanings and spun out a rivetting yarn.

And that's no word of a lie.

Tim Evans