blimey! as ever, a fantastic bit of early block crime wonderment - but this time with a difference. for once the hero - bill maynard, amusing to all brits who will forever associate such a name with bloody greengrass from "heartbeat" - isn't an absolutely irredeemable bastard... in fact i think this is one of the few hard boiled crime novels i've read where there's redemption at the end for a number of characters. even the femme fatale isn't double playing the hero, as they usually do in the genre. she's just a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work. not the best bit of block i've ever read but certainly the most surprising of the early hard boiled stuff. very good stuff indeed... ( )

Wicked solid bit of noir pulp. By accounts I have from all quarters received, I ought to be reading Elmore Leonard (a glaring hole in my library there) but now that I'm reading these Block books, I'm not sure I want to switch out. ( )

I am a complete sucker for the throwback 'caper' novels put out under the Hardcase imprint. From the cheesy cover artwork to the even cheesier, screamingly funny 'description' on the back cover, I love it all. Which is as good a way of rationalizing the high rating I give these things whenever I read them as any. Yup, I done been entertained this time, and I have a damn good idea I'll be equally entertained next time.

Call it a failing of my personality, call it what you will, but ah, to live, if only temporarily and vicariously the grifter's life, the road con, etc. The ghost of Aristotle sprinkles some catharsis dust and I move on.

Oh, yes. The book itself. A sterling representative of the breed. Small-time card-sharp meets (presumed) ex-hooker now married to 'tax-lawyer' a scam gets set up, and you're off the races. Won't be any more specific than that, since giving away any details would spoil the whole thing. Block tries oh so valiantly to throw in a few curves, and while they don't really add much... who CARES? You got the (a) small-time card sharp, (b) the beautiful woman of dubious merit, (c) an attempt to separate the rich man from his money, (d) what I assume is some fairly accurate descriptive of how a card sharp does what they do (worked for me, anyway), and (e) the obligatory melodramatic climax.

Sounds like heaven. ( )

Here is yet another gem from the Hard Case Crime series. This, the third re-issue of noir master Lawrence Block (others have been Grifter's Game (Hard Case Crime) and The Girl With the Long Green Heart (Hard Case Crime)), proves to be a minor classic of the genre. Block, more than just thrilling us with another tough-talking pot-boiler, presents us with a Psych 101 study of the fringe criminal mind. Bill Maynard, a small time card sharp, settles in a bucolic village 3 hours outside of NYC long enough to become entangled with the well-off, Friday night Poker playing, Country club set. He secures a good job in sales, meets a nice girl; and a not so nice broad. The intriguing part here is Bill's temptation, not by the dark side, but rather by the normal, everyday, boring, firmly anchored life of a successful salesman married to a devoted wife. Will Bill be drawn to the light side or will he finally have his marked cards and deal them too? Read Lucky At Cards, you won't feel cheated. ( )

Because where else can you get a high-low paragraph like "We answered the question in the unmade bed with the lights on and the shades up. The room was on a high floor, so no one could have seen us, but we never thought about that at the time one way or the other. The lovemaking was too fast, too furious, too compulsive. There was deep need and dark hunger, and flesh merging with flesh, and an orchestral swell out of Tschaikovsky that led to a coda of pure Stravinsky." ( )