The Prop: A Novel [Paperback]

Pete Hautman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2006

National Book Award winner Pete Hautman delivers a fast-paced mystery set in the torrid, unforgiving Southwestern desert, where the stakes are sky high and all bets are off.

Peeky Kane is a prop player at an Arizona casino owned by the Santa Cruz tribe. Her job is to play poker. She makes a handsome living off the suckers who populate the card room. Life is sweet.

But something's not right at Casino Santa Cruz. When Peeky inadvertently finds herself in a fixed game and comes away a couple thousand dollars richer, she finds herself drawn unwittingly toward the dark side of professional poker. Peeky has always thought of herself as a straight shooter, but now things aren't so clear. And they're about to get a lot murkier.

When a band of clown-masked robbers makes off with millions of the casino's dollars and leaves behind four corpses, Peeky recognizes one of the robbers as a casino employee, and fears that one of her closest loved ones might also be involved. That same day, Peeky's son-in-law turns up to tell her that Jaymie, her beloved daughter, has been stealing money from Peeky for years to feed a crack habit.

Numb from these revelations, Peeky is compelled to action by an unlikely source when the most powerful member of the Santa Cruz tribe calls upon her to help him save his troubled casino. Peeky must draw on her years of reading poker faces and playing the odds to save the casino, her daughter, and herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hautman's Godless (2005) won a National Book Award for Young People's Fiction, but his impressive, sharply written new crime thriller is definitely for adults—especially those who would rather play poker than do anything else. Peeky Kane, an attractive woman in her 40s, is a prop—hired to keep shorthanded poker games going at a casino owned by a Native American tribe near Tucson, Ariz. She gets paid $110 per eight-hour-shift plus health insurance, keeps any money she wins at the tables (and must make up any losses out of her own pocket). Because she's shrewd and talented, Peeky has managed to put together a small nest egg, some of which goes to her troubled 21-year-old daughter, Jaymie. Peeky's lover, Buddy Balcomb, is also a poker addict, whose own winning streak may be over. Peeky's life takes a few sharp turns after some crooked dealers find a new way to steal money and make her an unwilling accomplice. As this short but action-packed novel shows, Hautman is the kind of cool, expert player who keeps the cards coming. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Hautman won a National Book Award for the YA novel Godless (2004), and he plays a lot of poker, so it's no surprise he's an assured storyteller who knows his way around the felt. His latest poker-themed crime novel, with its crisp pacing, slick plot, and canny characters, will have readers already caught up in the Texas Hold 'Em craze nodding along with knowing pleasure while it lights a fire under everyone else to buy a rack of chips. Patty "Peeky" Kane works as a "prop" at an Arizona Indian casino, which means she fills out shorthanded poker games on behalf of management but plays--and wins--with her own stake. A cop's widow who was briefly on the force herself, Peeky is cruising into middle age when she notices a couple of dealers scamming jackpots. She keeps quiet, but then an insane posse of clowns steals a million bucks from the cage and kills several people in the process. Signs point to an inside job, and Peeky finds herself both under suspicion and roped into investigating the crime--even as she must track down her troubled daughter with a potentially violent son-in-law. There's a lot of muss and a little fuss, but Peeky maintains her wry, letting-it-all-hang-out vibe come hell or bad boyfriends. As an addition to the mystery game, she's as welcome as pocket aces. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Original edition (March 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743284658
• ISBN-13: 978-0743284653
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,825,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Okay, here's some miscellaneous personal info. I'll try to be as brief as possible. I was born in 1952 in Berkeley, California, or so I am told (I don't really remember). At age five I moved to St. Louis Park, Minnesota where I went to Cedar Manor Elementary School (also the alma mater of Al Franken and the Coen brothers, and no, they are not close personal friends of mine) and eventually graduated honor-free from St. Louis Park High School. This is so tedious. Why do you keep reading? For the next seven years I attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota. Contrary to recent news reports, I did not graduate from either institution. After college I worked various jobs for which I was ill-suited, including sign painter, graphic artist, marketing executive, pineapple slicer, etc. Eventually, having exhausted other options, I decided to write. My first novel, Drawing Dead, was published in 1993. Today, I live with mystery writer and poet Mary Logue in Golden Valley, Minnesota and Stockholm, Wisconsin. We have two small dogs (are you still reading?) named Rene and Jacques. There you have it. Fifty-plus years compressed into a few short paragraphs. Feel free to copy and paste for your book report, but don't tell anybody I suggested it. Need to know more? Check out the FAQs page on my website at http://www.petehautman.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hang On - This is a Good One!, October 25, 2006

By 

John R. Linnell (New Gloucester, ME United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Prop: A Novel (Paperback)

This is my first Pete Hautman book in some time and it was well worth the wait. I enjoy books that involve gambling and are well written and this one surely qualifies. It is right up there with James Swain's numerous books involving Tony Valentine.

In using Patty Kane as the narrator, Hautman does a difficult thing. I could find no place in the book where I felt "Peekey" as she is called, was anything less than authentic.

I spend half the year in Tucson, so I was familiar with the venues she described which were not fiction. However, the Casino Santa Cruz has yet to be built (which is probably a good thing) and while Hautman may live in Minnesota, he has certainly spent a fair amount of time in The Old Pueblo.

If you like a book that is fast paced, has a lot of interesting characters and spins a yarn that keeps you turning the pages, this is for you. I loved it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nacho Noir, April 10, 2006

By 

Ron Edison (Glen Ellyn, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prop: A Novel (Paperback)

I've been a fan of Pete Hautman since his quirky DRAWING DEAD. Hautman himself is a big poker fan and the poker theme runs through much of his work--including STONE COLD, his cautionary young adult novel. The tone here is much more noir than his previous work, so if you enjoy that end of the genre, you'll be at home here. For myself, I know next to nothing about poker but that didn't stop me from enjoying this novel. Hautman nails the casino environment, the poker jargon, the breezy dialogue, tribal politics, and makes excellent use of the Arizona setting. But it's the vivid characters that make the book shine. Peeky Kane is an atypical female protagonist, sort of a low-key, blowzy-but-wiser Stephanie Plum, on the cusp of middle age and carrying far more baggage. She and the other characters will haunt you long after you put this one down. The first person/present tense voice and just-right word choices raise the literary bar for crime fiction. Genre writing just doesn't get any better than this.

At writing conferences, Hautman is quick to point out that Elmore Leonard was a major influence. For my money, I'd rather read the next Pete Hautman than the next Elmore Leonard. THE PROP earns him a spot at the top of the pantheon.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good mystery, although too much poker for me, January 11, 2009

By 

Bort "book reader" (North Dakota, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prop: A Novel (Paperback)

The Prop is a book I picked up off a clearance rack at Borders. I read two young adult novels by the author, Pete Hautman. Godless was a book I enjoyed, but I was more ambivalent toward Invisible.

The Prop is about Peeky, a middle-aged woman who works as a prop player at a Tucson Indian casino. A prop player is someone employed by the casino to prop up the action at a poker table when players leave and the game is shorthanded. Peeky enjoys her work and is successful at it. Things begin to change when she shares in a jackpot meant for someone else in a fixed game. Even though she suspects it was fixed, she feels she is due for some luck and that it is the job of the security staff to catch the cheaters.

Following the fixed game, Peeky is playing at the casino when four men wearing clown costumes burst into the card room with guns. The robbery quickly goes bad, as four people end up dead, although the robbers make off with over one million dollars. Peeky is disheartened to realize that one of the robbers is her boyfriend, Buddy, but she chooses not to reveal this fact to the authorities or her bosses at the casino.

In addition, Peeky's son-in-law Eduardo comes to her with the news that her daughter, Jaymie, is addicted to crack. Jaymie has been stealing money from Peeky to support her habit, and has now disappeared. Peeky and Eduardo become involved with lowlifes as they go in search of Jaymie.

Meanwhile, the reclusive founder of the casino comes to Peeky looking for help with the direction of the casino and with the robbery. He admires her way of reading people, the same quality that makes her successful at poker. Although he realizes she has not always been up front with him, he sees her as the only person who can help unravel the mysteries of what goes on at the casino. She agrees to become his eyes and ears, as she also tries to unravel the mysteries of exactly who her boyfriend is and what to do about her daughter.

I went into this book looking for something like Carl Hiaasen's writing, and while I noticed similarities, it wasn't quite as absurd. Maybe it is because it is hard to measure up to Hiaasen's depictions of Florida. Anyway, the story itself was engaging, with an interesting mix of unusual characters populating the casino. I was not very interested in the poker scenes, as I know nothing about Texas hold'em, but others might be more appreciative. As a mystery, it was enjoyable as a whole.