Customer Reviews

Drawing Dead

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DRAWING DEAD

By Grant McCrea, Random House Canada, 389 pages, $29.95

I'm not a poker fan, so I wasn't initially attracted by this series featuring lawyer-turned-card player Rick Redman. But Drawing Dead has me convinced. Yes, the plot turns on a card, but that's a bit like saying Myron Bolitar is just another sports manager. Grant McCrea, a semi-retired senior litigator, originally from Montreal, knows his law and his cards, and he also knows how to pace a crime novel.

It takes a murder to get Rick Redman to decide to leave his law practice. What's he going to do next? Why not combine two hobbies, cards and private investigation. He can make money and also chase gold and glory at the World Series of Poker, in Las Vegas.

Of course, on the way to all that glory, he needs to pay the bills. So when a gorgeous woman asks him to locate a missing person, well, it's all in a day or two's work. But he ends up in a serious (and potentially deadly) game with some Russian mobsters, and that's all the beginning of his life as a PI on the Strip.

The plot is slightly contrived, but McCrea has some good lines and he's got a nice noir touch with both setting and dialogue. Fans of CSI and of poker will both love this one.

McCrea's books nicely set a crime-noir atmosphere for his protagonist, Rick Redman (this is the second in what I presume is an ongoing series, the first being the equally smart "Dead Money"). This one has all the requisites: he drinks too much (an understatement), likes women to excess (a greater understatement), is smart as hell (in his own evaluation-, and maybe a few others'). Redman refuses to conform to anyone's idea of respectability, and there's much more going on here than the usual formulaic novel of this genre. He has a complexity that left me genuinely wondering what he'd do or say next and the goings-on are layered and nuanced. It begins with Rick's discovery of his brother-in-law's nicely dressed (as in a tuxedo) but slightly handicapped (as in dead) body, shoeless as well, and then moves to the back-story, which has among other wonderfully demented forays, a trip to a gun club in Hoboken and a crazy poker game with a bunch of Russian mobsters in Brighton Beach. Speaking of poker, there's lots of it, but even if you aren't an aficionado of the game, you'll enjoy the ride nonetheless. Naturally, Redman ends up at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, where he and his buddies hope to cash big and pay off the Russians (did I mention Redman doesn't play as well as his addled cerebrum believes he does?). Needless to say, he doesn't end up quite the world champion he fancies himself, but a bunch of other hilarious stuff does, much of it taking place in the kind of joint you don't want your kids to know you've been to. And, if you have been to those places, shame on you. And, next time, bring me. The minor characters have a vibrance that makes them seem more than ancillary figures, and you'll find yourself wishing you could get to meet them. The plot is just convoluted enough to be unguessable without becoming all fancily absurd or baroque. It's also really funny... it's not often I will audibly laugh while reading something, I did here. Highly recommended.