"I can sense when things aren't right on a casino floor and
I just take it from there," says Tony Valentine, the cop turned
casino consultant who -- all boasting aside -- finds himself stumped
more often than not in Funny Money. James Swain's smartly plotted,
often humorous sequel to Grift Sense
sends the 62-year-old Valentine back to his hometown, Atlantic City,
where his former police partner, Doyle Flanagan, has been blown up
in his car at a McDonald's. Is this murder linked to Flanagan's investigation
of a $6 million blackjack hustle at the city's giant Bombay casino,
allegedly perpetrated by a gang of badly coifed Croatians? Meanwhile,
Valentine will have to face down thugs who are putting the squeeze
on his flaky son, try to appease the Bombay's much-despised owner,
and win the help -- and heart -- of a no-nonsense woman wrestler with
a nasty attitude.
Like his debut novel, Funny Money is distinguished by Swain's knowledge
of gambling scams from card counting to the judicious application
of a "monkey's paw" on a slot machine. Less even is this
book's character development. Valentine is expertly drawn, and the
relationship between him and his late-blooming son is both convincing
and heartwarming. But some secondary players are about as thinly realized
as a poker chip, and Swain's too-convenient use of violence as a plot
propellant threatens to undermine his story's credibility. All in
all, though, Funny Money is a safe bet.
--J. Kingston Pierce
From Publishers Weekly
The same warmth, honesty and inside expertise that made Grift
Sense (2001) a memorable crime debut is back in spades in Swain's
second book about ex-cop Tony Valentine, who advises gambling casinos
on how to spot and stop cheaters. Swain might not be a Leonard or
even a Hiaasen when it comes to a seamless writing style, but he makes
up for it with insights into his characters' behavior that inevitably
ring true. Tony's relationship with his hapless son, Gerry, is letter-perfect:
a father's natural love warring at every turn with a hard man's distaste
for weakness. No matter how often Gerry screws up, Tony finds some
way to help him. This same ambivalence colors Tony's dealings with
Archie Tanner, the brutal, bullying fixer who runs a vast Taj Mahal-like
casino in Atlantic City and who now wants to buy his way into Florida's
gambling industry. When Tony's ex-partner and lifelong friend Doyle
Flanagan is killed while looking for a strange band of shabby Croatian
math geniuses who are ripping off Tanner's blackjack operation, Valentine
takes over the investigation. But it's not really revenge or the $1,000-a-day
fee that motivates him: it's a weird but finally totally logical belief
that the gambling business which preys on human weakness should at
least be clean and honest. Stretching that analogy only a little,
Swain makes Tony his Don Quixote tilting at blackjack tables and slot
machines instead of windmills.
© 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Take a south Florida setting, quirky characters, a crusty retired
cop, and what do you get? Elmore Leonard? Carl Hiaasen? Try James
Swain, a new voice in the off-beat mystery subgenre. We first met
Tony Valentine, freelance "grifter hunter," in Grift
Sense (2001), Swain's debut novel. In this second outing, Tony
returns from Florida to his native Atlantic City (Leonard did Atlantic
City, too, in Glitz) to solve the murder of his best friend, fellow
grifter hunter Doyle, who had been on the verge of cracking a $6-million
blackjack scam at the legendary Bombay casino. Taking over Doyle's
investigation, Tony tracks the blackjack grifters, coming into contact
along the way with all sorts of colorful lowlifes, including a crippled
ex-cop gun supplier, a ring of cocky Eastern European cheats, and
a certain charming female wrestler. Amid the eccentrics, Tony stays
grounded by daily phone calls to his office manager in Florida, his
neighbor Mabel--Miss Moneypenny to Tony's James Bond. A fun, frolicking
crime novel that makes great use of its casino setting.
-- Mary Frances Wilkens
© American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Library Journal
Former policeman Tony Valentine (Grift
Sense) operates a gambling casino protection service out of his
Florida home. When his former partner and best friend now a PI is
murdered in Atlantic City, Tony vows vengeance on the "European,"
the elusive and resourceful scam artist his friend was investigating.
Tony contacts the casino, which has been bilked of $6 million, and
goes to work with surveillance tapes and his own personal network
of contacts. Though hampered at times by his adversarial son, Mafia
types, and others, Tony wins his game. A smooth narrative, credible
situations, and a nervy plot make this second Tony Valentine mystery
a highly recommended choice for most mystery collections.
© 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
When last we saw Tony Valentine -- former cop, lifelong misanthrope,
and legendary catcher of casino cheats -- he was just coming up for
air after a close brush with the afterlife in his first outing, the
acclaimed Grift Sense.
This time around, it's personal. Tony Valentine's ex-partner Doyle
Flanagan has been blown to pieces by a car bomb. Shortly before his
death, Doyle had been filling Valentine in on the details of his latest,
most baffling case -- an impressive $6 million blackjack scam at Atlantic
City's legendary Bombay casino.
Valentine determines that the only way to bring his friend's killers
to justice is to crack the Bombay heist himself. But standing between
Valentine and his goal is a head-spinning assortment of ruthless gangsters,
crooked croupiers, eccentric millionaires, and Croatians with bad
haircuts. His only ally: an irresistibly enigmatic female wrestler.
With diamond-hard prose, triple-crossing plot twists, and a deliciously
noir-inflected atmosphere, Funny Money finds James Swain more than
living up to his promise as a razor-sharp storyteller with unlimited
surprises up his sleeve.
