THE WILD CARD

Hard-bitten, chain-smoking, sweat-trickling poker players resolve their guilt about a 30-year-old murder like men—at the poker table, where jokers are wild and literary subtlety vanishes quicker than a cigarette docked untouched at the ashtray.

Five boyhood friends who dub themselves The Royal Flush (for the tattoos they wear on their upper arms) gather for a big showdown game in San Francisco. Four of them have played there for 30 years, but this time, Bobby is coming too. When they were teenagers, Bobby was the good-looking, smart, college-bound standout . . . until the boys took a boat up a river for some gambling and drinking just after high school graduation in 1963. At a gas stop along the way, they met Sally, a teenaged Madonna and killer cardplayer who hitched a ride with the hormonal youths. Bobby, the one who didn’t want her along, was the one she couldn’t resist, and when they disappeared into the woods for some erotic gymnastics his drunken, jealous buddies followed. While Bobby slept off the great sex, Sally wound up dead after some roughhousing got out of hand. Bobby disappeared across the river, and doesn’t reappear until the poker night 30 years later, when the four summon Bobby to square their consciences. Of course, he’s now a professional cardplayer, and after his former pals attempt to buy his silence he vengefully cleans them out of their money, homes, possessions, and businesses. Having introduced his friends to the prospect of traumatic, Sally-like loss, will Bobby give everything back?

Lots of monosyllabic checking and folding, but not much genuine tension here. Readers with some knowledge of poker and its canny ways may appreciate Joseph's (Deadline Y2K, 1999, etc.) putative drama more fully.