Tony Valentine Скачать все книги 6 Количество книг

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 AWOL, Valentine jets after him 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 M.I.A. 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.

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.

It’s 1979, and the Boardwalk Empire of Atlantic City is being torn down, replaced by a glitzy casino and all the terrible crime that goes with it. Cops on the take, mobsters stealing a million dollars a day, a serial killer preying on young women, and more con men and hustlers than you can shake a stick at, define the new Atlantic City. Only one man can clean up the little city by the shore, Detective Tony Valentine. With the mob breathing down his throat and a sadistic killer stalking him, Valentine will put his own life in peril, and risk his career, to insure that justice prevails.

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.