Barnes’ novel will be of particular interest to those familiar with slots, blackjack and the seamy side of casinos.
A Vegas novel, so naturally, it concerns scamming the casinos.
Jude Helms is out of his element in Las Vegas, for he’s that seeming rarity: an honest dealer. But he’s run into a string of bad luck, having been fired without cause from several casinos. (Well, perhaps not totally without cause. Once, he complimented a customer for her largesse, which was misconstrued as “large ass.") Now, it’s 20 years later, and although his marriage has fallen apart, he’s close to his children, 14-year-old Beth and recent college graduate Lucas. All Jude really wants is enough money to start his own masonry company, but until that time, he’s committed—or condemned—to work the tables. Finally he seems to get a break when Audie, the mother of one of Beth’s friends, introduces him to Ben, who’s impressed by Jude’s skill in dealing cards. Ben works with him and with Angel, a slick con, to perfect Jude’s technique in checking and changing cards without being seen. In a hierarchy of corruption, Ben seems to be working for the mysterious Wade, an ex-con definitely not to be messed with. When Jude feels he’s had enough, Ben informs him that he’s now “in” and can’t escape the $2 million scam that’s planned involving a “cold deck,” in which a deck of cards with predictable patterns is substituted for one of the casino decks in the shoe. Jude does everything he can to extricate himself from his morally compromising situation and to protect his children, something made far more difficult when he discovers that Audie, with whom he’s developed a sexual relationship, is perhaps the mastermind behind the whole scheme—and is also married to the ever-menacing Wade.
Barnes’ novel will be of particular interest to those familiar with slots, blackjack and the seamy side of casinos.Pub Date: March 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-87417-884-5
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Univ. of Nevada
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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