James Swain: Take Down

How to take down a Casino
Billy Cunningham is a grifter - a person who can rip off a Casino. He works with a crew of beautiful women and other grifters to carry out carefully planned very skillful scams that have earned them a wonderful life. Billy has a luxury house, a Maserati and cash to spare. It is the kind of life that absorbs all of Billy's life and he cannot afford to make mistakes which would land him a long-term jail term.

An old-time grifter offers Billy a place in a scam that would rip off the high rollers' room of a new casino. The offer looks foolproof but soon Billy finds himself up to his neck in trouble from the casino's violent managers. To keep himself and his crew out of trouble Billy agrees to help the casino to defeat a family of cheats who are planning a huge scam at the casino.

Billy has no intention of ratting on fellow cheats and works out his own way to protect the cheats and at the same time get his own back on the casino's managers and the owner who is using the casino to launder drug money. The stakes are high, up to eight million dollars, the risk is extreme for Billy's life or a life in prison. The risk is also high for his crew which Billy will defend with his life.

I have been fascinated by several of James Swain's series about casino cheaters where Tony Valentine is on the other side of the game tracking down cheaters. This time the table is turned and Swain takes us into the world of a charming and skilfull cheater. It is exciting, challenging and a rewarding look at a most unusual world.

I was also lucky to read this as an audiobook narrated by talented voice actor Nick Podehl who brought the world of casinos and cheats to life with his marvellous representations of the players from all sides of the game. Highly recommended for those who like something a little different from the straightforward thriller.

James Swain: Mr Lucky

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Can someone always be lucky?
MR LUCKY is the another great read in the entertaining and well written series by James Swain featuring Tony Valentine, a retired cop from New Jersey whose beat covered the casinos in Atlantic City. In retirement Valentine provides valuable advice to casinos throughout the world on identifying cheaters.

Tony thinks he's seen it all until he meets Ricky Smith, once a small-town loser, who now seems to be the luckiest man on earth. Ricky gets caught in a hotel fire in Las Vegas, and survives when he dived off a high-rise balcony through the hotel spar glass roof and onto a mattress. In bare feet he runs over to the next door casino and starts an incredible winning streak around the tables and even beats world’s greatest poker player Tex "All In" Snyder.

Nobody has that kind of winning streak and the casino won't pay out until all possible scams are investigated. Despite vowing never to work on Nevada casino matters again Valentine takes on the challenge of showing that Mr Lucky hadn't been lucky at all. When he travels to Ricky's home town, appropriately called Slippery Rock, to find out more about the lucky man he finds more than he expects, especially when his investigation starts to become violent.

Because he is on a tight time schedule and can't be in two places at once, Valentine reluctantly co-opts his son Gerry, who has had gambling problems in his past, to visit Tex Snyder, reportedly a pretty obnoxious individual. Gerry gets tempted by Snyder which brings him into a violent confrontation with the Dixie Mafia.

Swain takes us on a switchback of violence and tricks which extend his magic understanding of gambling tricks to the limit. Again it was an easy and entertaining read which gives an amazing insight into the murky world of gambling scams and cheating.

James Swain: Wild Card (Tony Valentine series)

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In "Wild Card" James Swain takes up back to Tony Valentine's early days as a cop in Atlantic City. I am always suspicious of the quality of prequels written later on in popular series. This is certainly not the case with this one as we learn a lot about how Valentine became the top anti-fraud cop in Atlantic City when gambling there was in its infancy. We also see something of his late wife Lois and the early teenage years of his wild son Gerry (who is already keeping a book at high school).

Tony has been wounded in a big homicide shootout and is not at all happy when his boss puts him on "light duties" as head of the Casino Investigations Division in Resorts Casino, the only one in AC at the time. Tony doesn't understand then that he has the skills, and almost photographic memory to detect gambling scams that others would miss.

Resorts is run by the local mafia which is skimming millions a year in a scam that no-one can identify. The casino is a magnet for cheaters throughout the country and Swain assures us that all of the scams in the book were used by hustlers at the time.

While being close to the mafia is dangerous there are other dangers in town with a serial killer who picks up hookers in the casino and imprisons them, starving them to death. The danger is ever present as the killer has known Tony in his early days.

I have become a bit of a Tony Valentine addict and find this series very entertaining. I strongly recommend this one because it gives a great insight into the start Valentine's fascinating career and an interesting history of the early days of gambling and the mob in AC.

     

James Swain: Grift Sense

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"Grift Sense" is the first in the very entertaining series by James Swain featuring Tony Valentine, a retired cop from New Jersey whose beat covered the casinos in Atlantic City. In retirement Valentine provides valuable advice to casinos throughout the world on identifying cheaters.

Valentine is asked by Nick Nicocropolis, a sleazy but reasonably honest owner of The Acropolis, a run-down casino in Las Vegas, to work out how he is losing money outside the odds to one of his blackjack customers. Nicocropolis is an amazing larger-than-life character with a libido higher than his IQ who keeps a folio of nude photos of each of his many conquests. To enhance the entry to his casino Nick commissioned a famous sculptor to carve toga-clad statues of his bevy of ex-wives - two beauty queens, two showgirls, a stripper, and a retired hooker. At night, to attract gamblers, a kitsch fountain sprays coloured water in titivating bursts onto the statues.

Tony concludes that the scam involves an unknown facial connection between the dealer and the gambler who are apparently unknown to one another. He is stunned when he concludes that the only person capable of this scam is someone who was killed a few years ago. Step by step Valentine tracks down one of the biggest potential gambling frauds in the history of Las Vegas.  The size and target of the scam eludes you till the very end.

James Swain is a natural story-teller who keeps you in suspense and guessing to the very last page. I am really enjoying and recommend the Tony Valentine series, especially for its insight into fascinating and ingenious gambling scams and Valentine's skills in detecting scams and fraud that are missed by even the most experienced casino security operators and gambling regulators.

James Swain: Jackpot (Tony Valentine series)

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This is the first time I have read a book by James Swain, and after "Jackpot (Tony Valentine series)" I will certainly be reading more of his books. He is a great story-teller and moves the plot along at a gallop to keep the pages turning.

This book gives a fascinating introduction to the world of gambling and the constant battle to prevent fraud. Tony Valentine is an ex-cop who is an expert in identifying all kinds of gambling fraud throughout the world. He is hired by the Governor of Nevada to track down someone who is fixing slot machines so they pay out jackpots on demand when Nevada gambling security have checked that the machines are working OK.

Tony's son, Gerry, has grown up on the wild side and has been involved in some gambling scams in his time. With a wife and young child, Gerry is maturing and for the first time uses his illegal experiences to help Tony to identify scams that are familiar to him.

Both of them get involved in tracking down Bronco Marchese, a long-time scammer and cold-blooded killer. Tony and Gerry have a score to settle as Bronco gunned down and killed Tony's brother. Bronco is involved in the big scam which he believes will give him the win of a lifetime.

Swain gives us an amusing sideline when, in Tony's absence, Valentine's assistant, Mabel, has to deal with a case of fraud in a Casino run by an Indian tribe. Her relationship with the tribe and especially Chief Running Bear is absolutely fascinating.

While this book can be read stand-alone it probably would have been better if I had read other books in the series first. I plan to do that soon in both the Tony Valentine and Jack Carpenter series.