Customer Reviews

Sucker Bet (A Tony Valentine Novel)

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4 star:		(10)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

James Swain writes fun books. I can't imagine anyone who would not enjoy his latest. It's the third novel featuring Tony Valentine, a retired former cop who now works as a casino consultant catching cheaters. He's a little older than your usual protagonist, but that only makes him more endearing. He's a pretty well developed character as well. His difficulty interacting with his son and his neglect of his caring neighbor show the reader that he is far from perfect. However, what he does is catch cheats, or crossroaders as Swain calls them, and at that, he is very good indeed.

Swain's books are worth reading if only for the insight into the world of scams, cheats, and hustlers that he gives us. Each of his three books revolves around Valentine's investigation of a major scam. In Sucker Bet, it begins with a blackjack hustle but moves quickly into a major college sports scandal. While he is investigating, Tony frequently gets calls from worried customers asking him to look at security video or inventory lists and determine how their casino is getting scammed. These little episodes, while not really part of the plot, are some of the best parts of the book.

Aside from the scams and grifts, hidden in each of his books is a pretty good mystery too. People end up dead and Tony in drawn in through his inevestigation. As with most novels of this type, Valentine's life and the lives of those he cares about are endangered. While there are better mytery novels out there, few can match the originality of James Swain.

Sucker Bet also includes perhaps one of the best characters I've ever read about. He is a chimpanzee named Mr. Beauregard, and he is amazing. I won't give too much away, but if you can keep yourself from laughing when Mr. Beauregard starts his Western "hurry-up" music, you need to lighten up.

In all, Sucker Bet is an slightly above average mystery novel with enough good character development, originality, and fun to make it worth reading for almost everyone. It might help to read the others in the series first (Grift Sense, Funny Money) but this could be read as a standalone as well. Swain is a fine novelist and I'm looking forward to more of his work. If you like this one, keep an eye out for the fourth Tony Valentine novel, set in his cop days of the late 70's, due out in 2004.

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

The title of this book could just as easily have been "Monkey Business," and it would have been figuratively and literally correct. There is enough monkey business going on at the Micanopy Indian Casiono to keep Tony Valentine busy for...well...at least a whole novel. This is the third in the Tony Valentine series and if you have not caught up with these novels yet, what on earth are you waiting for? I have now read them all and even though I started with the most recent novel first, each story pretty much stands on it's own and very little is lost buy not having read them in sequence. Valentine is a trouble shooter and problem solver for the casino industry which puts him in touch with some pretty "interesting" people on both sides of the sams he is hired to investigate. In this one he is dealing with a gangster names Rico Bianco and another bad guy by the name of Victor Marks. Swain likes to populate his novels with attractive and nubile ladies and the chief morsel in this one is a dish by the name of Candy Hart.Candy is the "raggle" who is being used as bait to swindle an aging Brtish rock star by Bianco, but on the way to the big payoff, she let her heart get in the way of her head and the plot takes a turn which makes Candy's life more interesting and fragile. The other monkey in the story is a chimp, as in chimpanzee. Mr. Beauregard by name. He has many talents. One of them is playing the ukelele. The others you will need to read the book to find out about. Swain has the knowledge, background and imagination to make his Valentine books a treat to read. Try one and you will be a fan. Guranteed!

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?"

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.

Continuing character mysteries must improve or they fizzle. Readers want continuity in a character, but gradual revelation and growth are also necessary, still the author must avoid the trap of constantly repeating plot patterns. When the author reveals his character a bit at a time, building upon events and clues dropped in previous works the mystery novel becomes a true pleasure. For example, other Florida based characters, in the novels of White and HAll, demonstrate constancy and change. The reader is in a familiar place but on the edge of something new, empathy and fear neatly balanced. The other side is the excess of formula that became Travis McGee. Swain must watch this trap for his principal.

Tony Valentine, retired Atlantic City police detective, living on Florida's west coast, having spent his career solving casino scams, finds himself recently widowed and has opened a consulting business assisting with difficult to solve cheats. This is an opportunity for exotic settings, different levels of violence/threat and perhaps just a touch too much of the procedure mystery. Certainly, the concentration on blackjack and slots is noticable. Some ventures into roulette and craps seem to promise future adventures. Also the mechanics of the casino operation: cameras, security, count rooms, cashing in and out, etc. are also directions in which the author promises to give us future adventures.

This novel begins with a nice piece of misdirection, Tony and his girlfriend Kat ( meet her in his previous novel Funny Money) are part of a wrestling promo. Events at the Micanopy casino (also on the horizon in the previous novel)will soon interfere. What is the scam and who is really involved will take up the rest of the book. Son Gerry -"Son grow up. Get a Job,"and Gerry's girlfriend Yolanda as well as Tony's neighbor MAbel all reappear. No trusty sidekick yet. Given the Micanopys, the Miami/Everglades setting provides for some local thrillers on the beach and in the swamp. There is a nice twist, as the car-bomb in Funny Money which has carried off a couple thugs suggests to some Miami mobsters that Tony is "connected" and thus must be respected.

This is a fast read. Plot is tighter and better controlled than Funny Money. There is wit and thrills and more than a touch of the believable. having preferred Doc Ford"s relationships to Travis McGee's (Randy White vs John MacDonald) I hope, as the series develops that we do not get into predictable "significant other " dumpin used to keep romantic plots alive. Somehow a well balanced group of characters lends a sense of community .

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

Sucker Bet, a novel by James Swain featuring Tony Valentine, is not the kind of book that makes you say "this could have happened for real". It does make you laugh, get caught up in the plot, and it made me re-read several passages after finishing the book because several minor characters were interesting to me.
Tony Valentine is an ex-cop who catches gambling cheats for casinos and struggles with his own personal and family life at the same time. In this novel, he ends up caught in a crossfire between different gambling scams, involving the Micanopy Nation, a Sicilian mobster, alligators in Tony's car, a British former rock drummer, and a hooker with the unlikely name of Candy Hart. Swain's major talent consists of both building a plotline that involves all these characters and giving each one of them a certain depth, well-crafted backgrounds of their own.
Personally, the most interesting parts of the book for me involved the Micanopys, with a glimpse of their customs, problems, justice system, and relations with the society and government around them. Swain does an effective job of portraying a little-known world within the United States, managing to inspire curiosity about the lives of Native Americans.
Some reviewers point out the less believable aspects of the story, such as a chimpanzee who imagines people's favorite songs and plays them on the ukulele and a hoax involving a rock band - that's right, these parts are not believable, but they do their part to make the book more fun.
The only serious shortcomings I would note are two: one is the ending, which left me a bit in doubt as to how some things happened or were understood, and the other is that with the exception of Tony's daughter-in-law, all Latino characters are portrayed rather unsympathetically.
Overall, I enjoyed this book much more than Grift Sense, as Swain seems to have grown into his writing style, and became eager to read more novels with Tony Valentine and the other characters.

First of all, let me report some detective work of my own. At the end of chapter 25, Tony Valentine cites an anecdote which fans of the late Dashiell Hammett will undoubtedly recognize. It's a close variation of the famous "Flitcraft story" told by Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon (the book, not the movie).
The rest of Sucker Bet is, however, quite original. In this the third installment of the Tony Valentine series, author James Swain takes us on a hilariously over the top joyride through South Florida.
The story is a gutsy one. Complex and full of surprises but at the same time not overly convoluted. The plot starts off with Tony Valentine investigating a dishonest blackjack dealer at a low rent Indian casino in the Everglades. But that's only the beginning. Before long, Tony finds he's become involved in a gangster's scheme to make millions from the outcome of a college basketball game.
A lot happens along the way. Tony is attacked by alligators. He exposes a clever way of cheating at blackjack. His beloved neighbor Mabel is taken hostage. And his ne'er do well son, Gerry, cuts short his honeymoon to help his Dad out.
Swain introduces us to a number of really interesting and colorful characters. Candy Hart, the redheaded hooker who falls for her client. Splinters, the Cuban limo driver who doubles as a hitman. Bobby Jewel, the 400 lb bookie and many many more. But perhaps the most unforgettable supporting character is Mr. Beauregard, the ukulele strumming chimpanzee who is smarter and more insightful than most human beings.
Sucker Bet, like Funny Money and Grift Sense before it, is remarkable for its "readability". Page after page and chapter after chapter just flies by.
James Swain is obviously a talented writer. It'll be fun to see what else he has in store.