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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The rise of Gerry,
This review is from: Deadman's Bluff: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
Tony Valentine is getting a bit long in the tooth. He is over sixty now and can't bounce back from a beating with quite the speed of a younger guy.
So if you are James Swain and you understand that your cerebral hero must also be a man of action, you have to bring on someone to help Tony. And so we have Tony's son Gerry. His rough edges are sandpapered to a new smoothness. His flaws are prologue, but his present is blemish-free. tony doesn't worry anymore if Gerry's former profession-bookmaking-will get him killed. He worries if the people who want to kill Tony will kill Gerry for being just like Tony. And this is the major flaw in this edition. The grifters are there, where they belong on the casino floors, and the scammers and the politician dance their symbiotic mating call. But it is Gerry not Tony who emerges at the end. Just maybe, Swain is right. Tony needs someone to take the beatings. Or just maybe some editor has becided this for Swain. Time will tell if this is a good move. I am keeping my money on Tony though.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Second part of two-parter,
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This review is from: Deadman's Bluff: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
Another in the author's series of novels featuring Tony Valentine, who consults with casinos and law-enforcement about gambling scams and scammers.
In this tale, the second of two parts ("Deadman's Poker" being the first), Valentine remains in Las Vegas to discover how a blind poker player is scamming a poker tournament, which is being televised nationally by an ESPN-like cable sports network. Meanwhile his son Gerry goes to Atlantic City, where the scam originated, to find out what he can learn there. Two of the characters from "Poker" reappear--Gloria, a female reporter for the network, who Valentine develops a relationship with, and a 72-year-old grifter named Rufus, who among other "wagers" bets that he can win a pingpong match against a champion. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor, and the side-stories about other scams are as always a treat. I didn't mind at all that it took the author 700 pages, total, to finish the story.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More flaws,
By
This review is from: Deadman's Bluff: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
As a non-player, I didn't catch the playing mistakes, but there are other flaws -- Swain was trying to write too much to quickly, I think.
Note, on page 81, he has the doctor attending to Detective Davis saying, "The human body has a hundred quarts of blood. Eddie lost a tiny fraction of that. He'll be fine. Trust me." I think it's more like 5.5 quarts. Also, I think he changed the color of Gloria's eyes between "Deadman's Poker" and "Deadman's Bluff." Then, there are typos not caught, etc. These are things I didn't notice in his earlier books. That doesn't mean they aren't there; just that I didn't catch them. Having said that, I'm still looking forward to his next book, "Jackpot."
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