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| Sucker Bet | 
| Author: James Swain
Publisher: Fawcett
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $7.98 (100%)
New (23) Collectible (1) from $4.24
Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 276571
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 4.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0345463234
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780345463234
ASIN: 0345463234
Publication Date: June 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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Product Description
A hardened ex-cop, Tony Valentine now nabs hustlers who rob casinos, and the Micanopy Indian Reservation Casino in South Florida desperately needs his expertise. A blackjack dealer has rigged a game, dealt a player eighty-four winning hands in a row, and then disappeared.
But the missing dealer is part of an even bigger, far deadlier scheme. Valentine’s trail leads him to Rico Blanco, a ruthless gangster who once worked for John Gotti; his shady, elusive partner-in-crime, Victor Marks; and a bombshell named Candy Hart, a hooker with dreams of love—a combination tailor-made to double-cross. It appears they have a con going down involving a cocky, filthy-rich Brit and his millions of dollars. Valentine’s challenge: to figure out how all the pieces of the seamy puzzle fit together . . . before his luck runs out and his life goes bust.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 Maybe It's Florida November 8, 2007
I like mystery series with quirky heroes and a few surreal characters. The first couple of Tony Valentine novels didn't quite fit that description, but there was still something not quite mainstream that drew me. In this novel, Swain has really started to come into his own as a writer. Though his hero, Tony Valentine, lives in Florida, this is the first novel that actually takes place there, and the locale is a plus. Though not as zany as Dorsey or Hiaasen, some of that off-kilter Floridaness that makes their books so good shines through here. Valentine is his usual surly self, but this time he's doing it amid a cast of highly entertaining, colorful characters.
He responds to a request from the Micanopy Indian casino to help catch blackjack cheaters when his romance with a professional wrestler goes south. A dealer has disappeared after dealing 84 winning hands to aging rock star Nigel Moon, and the Micanopys want to know how the scam was pulled off. What makes Valentine suspicious is that they don't seem so curious about what happened to the missing dealer, which makes him think some of the bad guys might be in casino management. When they try to feed him to the gators, he gets mad. Moon's winning streak is only part of a bigger scam involving a hooker, a college basketball game, a game show, and a carnival owner with a trained chimpanzee named Mr. Beauregard. Valentine just wants to figure out the blackjack scam, and isn't even aware of most of the intrigue playing out around him until he stumbles into the thick of it. Using his wits, along with some help from his ne'er do well son Gerry, the Micanopy chief, and his indomitable neighbor Mabel, who's minding the store while he's out of town, Valentine slowly unravels the intricate scam a murdering lowlife has been weaving for months. He faces danger more than once, but manages to get through it and even figures out a few things in his personal life, as well, as he goes through the process of grieving for his dead wife Lois.
This is a quality series of well-woven mysteries with a strong lead character. Tony Valentine may be a little on the crotchety side, but he's a good guy with strong morals who inspires love and loyalty in those around him, and he's no prudish goody two-shoes. He faces tough decisions and he makes mistakes, but he always ferrets out the villain. This time out, he does so against a richer backdrop of minor characters that pushed this book a notch above his others. There are still several more books for me to read in this series, and I look forward to them. James Swain is a crime novelist to watch.
Swain is entertaining to say the least October 21, 2007
It seems that almost by default, the not-so-serious mafia tinged hi-jinx genre novel must... absolutely must be set in Florida. Probably starting around the mid-1970's Elmore Leonard wrote some great books that managed to pull slap-stick and tough crime together in an ingenious manner. Best known since Leonard has been Hiaasen, who wrote some good books also. Authors from the weaker Shamus to my all time favorite genre writer Willerford have set their books in Florida and they all feel that they are mining the same vein.
James Swain takes a lot from Leonard. His 'unique' take is that his main character in this series is an ex-cop who can solve just about any casino cheating problem. The character is named Valentine and despite being in his mid 60's attracts the attention of several voluptuous women, wrestles alligators, and manages to get into several scrapes. Swain is a fast learner and his prose is as amusing and enjoyable to read as all the writers I mentioned above. This is good because it saves an other-wise tired and uninspired plot.
I would read this book for the laughs. Its not the best genre book ever, and not the best in this series.
 5 stars? Hell No! August 24, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Good people of Amazon review board should consider giving 5 stars to books that are exceptionally well written. Although this is a good story with interesting characters, it is certainly not 5 stars.
This is a good book to read when you are on a plane and there is absolutely nothing to do. If you don't read it, your life didn't really miss anything important.
If you enjoy gambling or visits to casino, you will enjoy it but don't expect too much. You may want to consider "Bringing Down The House" as this one is based on true story.
Entertaining but not Quite Believable September 21, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
A touch of Hiassen December 7, 2005
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
But as entertaining as ever. It's fun to learn while being held captive to the page.
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