FUNNY MONEY

Most of the mechanics who try to cheat the house take a powder the minute clouds of suspicion rise. But the European with the bad haircut who’s been scamming The Bombay, Archie Tanner’s Atlantic City casino, doesn’t vanish; he kills. Because the victim is not only Tony Valentine’s old friend and ex–cop partner, Doyle Flanagan, but the guy who was talking to Tony on a cell phone about his suspicions when his car blew up, Tony’s eager to fly back from his Florida retirement home to his old stamping grounds and go after the European. So it works out beautifully that Frank Porter, The Bombay’s surveillance chief, is under strict orders to hire Tony’s consulting firm (Grift Sense, 2001) to figure out how the scam is worked. No sooner is Tony back in town than other complications arise. His worthless son Gerry, heavily in debt to some serious mobsters, has agreed to hand over a bar his father owns in repayment. And his old martial-arts teacher Master Yun wants him to stop a wayward student calling herself the Judo Queen from desecrating a dojo robe emblazoned with a sacred crane by wearing it into the pro wrestling ring. It’s nice for Tony that one of these cases will bring him some major headaches among local scumbags, as well as a new ladylove, before he figures out the secret behind the brilliantly simple Bombay scam.

Despite an improbably high villain count, even for Atlantic City: solid, spirited second case from an author who dishes out professional anecdotes as generously as Edna Buchanan.