Sucker Bet (Tony Valentine)

James Swain's Tony Valntine character is always fun. Tough, but soft; chronically depressed, but always hopeful; crafty to a fault. Valentine is an ex-cop from Atlantic City who now consults with casinos eager to catch scammers, if not stop them before they win a penny. This is the third of the Tony Valentine mysteries. The first one ("Grift Sense") was dynamite - and each successor has gotten better. The action takes place largely at a Florida Indian Reservation casino. A blackjack player is dealt 84 winning hands in a row, a statistical impossibility.The dealer disappears. But that's only the beginning of the story as Tony gets involved. The blackjack scam is only the tip of the iceberg. Every page is fun. Swain's plots are complex, but always believable. The characters, each and every one of them, radiate believability. Swain's style is compelling and Tony Valentine is one heck of a hero. Jerry

Meet Tony Valentine. You know him already. He's Nathan Detroit's half-brother, raised over in Jersey by his Italian dad, who gets him a job on the Atlantic City PD to keep him out of trouble. When casinos come to town Tony becomes an expert in economic crime, forsaking the hookers and pimps he busted when he was in Vice. Now Tony's retired to Florida (where else?) and supplements his pension helping casinos catch the crooks and cheats that are drawn to the action like paparazzi to Madonna. It's a growth business and new casinos are popping up everywhere along with new ways of changing the odds in someone else's favor. The Micanopy tribe has a problem and gets Tony to drive over from the west coast (Florida, where else?)to catch the cheats. When the guy who hired him puts a gator in his car, Tony realizes that there is more going on than he was engaged to uncover. Welcome to Tony's world, where character is revealed and discarded as quickly as the turn of a card on the blackjack table. Meet the whales, the suckers (hey, that's you Mr. and Mrs. America!), the dealers, the cheats, the cons and the ex-cons. Step behind the surveillance cameras and rifle through the lockers of dealer-cheaters. Tony, an unlikely protagonist, is most things your mother warned you not to become. He is loud, garish, moody, and unreliable. But he is honest and smart as a whip. Even if Mom won't like him, you will love him.

James Swain has done it once again. I've read both Grift Sense and Funny Money, the first two books in this excellent series, and believe me Sucker Bet not only meets my expectations for a new Tony Valentine mystery but exceeds them. I've read the other reviews for the novel so I'm not going to regurgitate the same info here. I do however want to say that Mr. Swain has absolutely brought Tony (the main character, a retired cop who now runs his own business), Gerry (Tony's son) and Mabel (his neighbor and secretary) to life. One scene that comes to mind is when Tony goes to the hospital afraid that he's just had a heart attack. Not that it's written about exhaustively but its little things like this that gives a character a life of his/her own. If you like to read about gambling or private eye's this is a book not to be missed. Other wise read it for the entertainment value. I can't recommend this book or others in the series highly enough.

Elmore Leonard has nothing on Jim Swain: who else could mix in card hustlers, Indian gaming, a boozed-up English rock star, the Mafia, a pyschopathic killer who lives in the swamp,a couple of alligators ,an empathic chimp, as well as a few love stories, set them down in hot, simmering Florida and let them stew?The action starts at page one and doesn't let up. Along the way we learn a little about Indian gaming laws, catch up on Tony Valentine's somewhat complicated personal life (being a retired widowed cop isn't easy with a romantically inclined neighbor and a ne'er-do-well son with an affinity for law-breaking), as well as his burgeoning business as consultant to casino security officers, and get tutored in the fine art of card counting at blackjack. Swain manages to capture Florida perfectly ( no surprise - he's lived there for over twenty years) and can second-deal with the best. (He's also one of the best close-up deck technicians in the world.) He knows how to force a card without forcing the plot, and he keeps us guessing to the end of the book. Just when you think you've spotted your deuce, Swain turns it into an ace.This is the third of the Tony Valentine novels, featuring a retired New Jersey, no-nonsense detective who kept things honest in Atlantic City. Tony is a straight-and-narrow guy who wears clothes that don't go out of style, just like his old-fashioned ethics. His car isn't fancy, but it runs and gets the job done. Just like its driver.Sucker Bet was a treat."Hamburgers, Mr. Beauregard?"

On the Micanopy Indian Reservation in the Florida Everglades, Nigel Moon, a former drummer for an English rock band, won eighty-four hands of blackjack in a row. The dealer, Jack Lightfoot, did it on purpose at the instructions of his partner Rico Blanco who intends to run a scam using Moon's money. The chief of the tribe Running Bear is watching the security tapes but can't see how this scam went down so in desperation he calls in a consultant.Tony Valentine, founder and president of Grift Sense, finds the cheaters who try to rip off the casinos. He has a lot of experience doing that because he used to work as a police officer in Atlantic City when gambling was first legalized there. When he arrives on the reservation he figures out how the scam was run but a quick job soon gets very complicated as he becomes involved in tribunal justice and stopping Rico's scam. Along the way, he wrestles alligators, gets shot at and is almost killed by an out-of-control Rico, owing his life to a super intelligent monkey.If this book sounds a bit crazy, that is because it is a typical James Swain gritty yet humorous wild tale that also educates the readers in the ways a con artist can rip off a casino. The protagonist is a sixty-something year old honorable man who always stays true to his principles and values even if it makes him seem rigid to all the lesser mortals. SUCKER BET is a sure bet. Harriet Klausner