James Swain

*Meet Tony Valentine—former cop, lifelong misanthrope, and sixty-something freelance grifter-hunter. He's also something of a legend—and not just among the retirees of Palm Harbor, Florida. There isn't a pit boss from the boardwalk of Atlantic City to Las Vegas' main drag who hasn't called on Valentine to dump the grifters out with the trash. He has never thought twice about seeing every one of them rot in jail. So much for his sentimental side.

Then along comes his new job. Her name is Nola Briggs, a honey-blonde blackjack dealer from Las Vegas who's behind bars without a prayer in the world. Unless you count Valentine—and even he wouldn't bet on her innocence.

Likewise Nick Nicocropolis, the owner of the Acropolis Casino & Resort. He's got Nola on camera playing crooked blackjack to a shark named Frank Fontaine. Now Frank has disappeared, leaving his alleged accomplice to take the heat. All Valentine's got to play with is Nola. She isn't saying a world. Valentine's plan: post a reasonable bail, turn her loose, and see how—and where—she runs.

Shadowing a woman like Nola leads Valentine into a lethal world of greedy hustlers, bloodthirsty hit men, corrupt police, and a Las Vegas underworld that's taking him down with it. He counted on that; what he didn't count on is just how innocent Nola appears to be when her past starts showing. Or how many people want her out of the picture. Unfortunately neither Nola nor Valentine knows why. And it's going to be tough as hell for them to survive an enemy's vendetta when they don't know who their enemies are—or where they're hiding.

*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.

*A hardened ex-cop with great instincts, a sharp eye, and a short fuse, Tony Valentine still catches crooks, but a very special breed of them. He nabs hustlers who rob casinos, and finds the fatal flaw that allowed the place to get ripped off in the first place.

*For ex-cop Tony Valentine, life in balmy Florida provides little R&R. In fact, he’s in demand now more than ever. Armed with a special grift sense, Valentine can spot card cheats and even bigger game whose sole purpose on earth is to relieve a casino of its cash. But when his son, who was going to card-counting school, goes missing, Valentine jets to Las Vegas. Once in town, he is pressed into service—and lands inside a treacherous game with higher stakes than he has ever encountered before.

There’s a new casino in town, aptly named Sin, the largest on The Strip: three thousand guest rooms and a gambling floor as big as an airport terminal. The owners of Sin want Valentine to show them how the scams are done. But these powerful men harbor ulterior motives: They want to use their newfound skills to put a rival casino out of business.

Sin’s competition is the Acropolis, run by Valentine’s longtime pal. Nick taps Tony to figure out how an amateur won $50,000 at his blackjack tables. But the small job is full of landmines. For starters, the suspect bears a strong resemblance to his late wife. What’s more, Valentine’s son is still MIA. Upping the ante, a dead stripper is found with Valentine’s calling card—and her grief-stricken boyfriend is vowing revenge.

Yet in a city where barracudas wear pinstripes, time seems motionless even while it flies, and reality and illusion shift depending on the neon light, a greater threat maneuvers through the streets: an all-new breed of criminal with an agenda propelled by fury that will shake not just Valentine, but the city of Las Vegas.

*Tony Valentine made his living and his name as a cop in Atlantic City-and is now known worldwide for his ability to spot the kinds of scams, grifts, and rip-offs that cost casinos billions every year. A man with a biting wit who drives a '92 Honda, Tony is low-profile, old-school, and has seen it all-until he meets the luckiest man on earth.

Ricky Smith was once a small-town loser. Then he went to Las Vegas, jumped out the window of a burning hotel, lived to tell the tale, and tore up the Strip on an incredible winning streak. Ricky didn't just win at one slot machine or table game. He won at blackjack, roulette, and craps, and then beat the pants off the world's greatest poker player. Tony knows that goofy, loudmouthed Ricky Smith-or anyone else, for that matter-couldn't possibly be that fortunate. But when "Mr. Lucky" returns home to the little town of Slippery Rock, North Carolina, he keeps on winning everything from a horse race to a $50,000 lottery.

Hired by a desperate casino, Tony starts to pry into Ricky's past, his friends, and the strange little town that is benefiting from Ricky's fame and fortune.

Unfortunately for Tony, his cover is blown when he is forced to reveal a trick he has up his own sleeve: a pocket Glock he can shoot with laser-like precision. Suddenly, two men are dead, the cops are on Tony's tail, and the investigation explodes in violence-putting the lives of Tony's son and his young family in danger.

For years, Tony's son Gerry has dueled with his own criminal impulses. Now, the Ricky Smith case has lured Gerry through the gates of temptation and into a murderous confrontation with the Dixie Mafia. With Tony stuck on the slippery slope of Slippery Rock and Gerry fighting for his life, the Valentines are finding out just how bad good luck can get.

Against a neon-tinted backdrop of adrenaline rushes, hard crashes, big money, and high-wire tension, the inimitable James Swain has set his best Tony Valentine novel yet: a funny, furious ride with an astounding array of crooks, marks, and one killer scam.

*Tony Valentine is an expert at spotting cheats. He’s tossed them out of gambling casinos from Atlantic City to Las Vegas and Monaco. But though Tony has never met a scam he couldn’t crack, his son and partner, Gerry, has just walked into one with a body count.

What started with a conman’s deathbed confession turns into a deadly Las Vegas grudge match during the world’s biggest poker tournament. While Gerry and his shady friends tangle with the Vegas mob, Tony enlists the aid of an aging grifter who’s fleecing suckers with a dazzling array of improbable betting stunts. Tony's been hired to save the tournament (and stop a blind player who’s out to heist it), while Gerry’s just trying to stay alive now that murder is in the cards.

*A blind poker player named Skip DeMarco is scamming the world’s largest poker tournament in Las Vegas, and cheating-expert Tony Valentine and his son, Gerry, have been hired to find out how. DeMarco is tied to some dangerously desperate characters who will go to extremes even cold-blooded murder to ensure that the obnoxious DeMarco wins big. While Gerry flies to Atlantic City to suss out DeMarco’s secret, Valentine stays in Vegas and teams up with an aging grifter named Rufus Steele, who has his own score to settle with DeMarco.

On opposite sides of a deadly game, father and son work their way through a colorful landscape of conmen and hitmen. Together, they will have to prove there’s more to any game of chance than meets the eye.

A specialist in finding missing children, former cop Jack Carpenter was fired from the force for assaulting a prisoner. Broke after a civil lawsuit and estranged from his wife and daughter, he's living in a seedy beachside apartment north of Miami, Fla., with his dog. Then Simon Skell (aka the Midnight Rambler), whom Carpenter helped convict for murdering prostitutes, is released from prison on a technicality. Determined to prove Skell guilty, Carpenter is frozen out by the cop on the case, but help comes from an FBI agent whose daughter vanished years earlier. The tension rises as the investigation widens far beyond Skell.

Abb Grimes is famous. Just ask the ghoulish tourists who flock to his former home to take photographs. Years ago, Grimes killed eighteen women, some never found. As the head of the Broward County Missing Persons Unit, Jack Carpenter was intimately involved in the Grimes case. Now, days away from execution, the notorious serial killer reaches out to ex-cop Carpenter with a surprising request.

Abb Grimes’ grandson was lured from his home. The cops are convinced the boy’s father–Abb’s troubled son, Jed–is behind the boy’s disappearance, but Jack’s not so sure. With a personal connection to the kidnapped child, Carpenter takes the case, and that’s when the situation goes from terrifying to fatal. There’s another gruesome murder, and once again the evidence points straight to Jed. Have the unspeakable sins of his father taken root within this troubled young man?

Carpenter races against time and a police department that wants his help but rejects his aggressive style as he searches through an underworld of predators, assembling the jagged pieces of a depraved puzzle, desperate to put an end to a murderous stalker’s blood-soaked rampage.