James Swain

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 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.From the Hardcover edition.

The shadowy side of the Sunshine State, where blood runs cold even in the tropical heat, is the tantalizing, terrifying territory few know better than James Swain. His razor-sharp tales of criminals, cops, and South Florida--style suspense bite like a hungry gator and never let go.The past has come back to haunt P.I. Jack Carpenter, former head of the Broward County Missing Persons Unit. As a young cop he failed to stop the kidnapping of a college coed by a shockingly large assailant--and neither of them was ever seen again. The abduction has remained Carpenter's most chilling cold case, and even now the mystery of the missing girl lurks in his darkest dreams. But after eighteen years, it's about to become terrifying reality once more. When his daughter, Jessie, asks him to bird-dog a camera-toting creep who's been shadowing her college basketball team, Carpenter's hot pursuit of the video voyeur leads him smack into another run-in with his old hulking nemesis, who abducts one of Jessie's teammates. While the Broward County cops are determined to pin the rap on a convenient suspect, Carpenter isn't about to let grim history repeat itself--especially when he discovers a pattern of unsolved kidnappings involving the same massive perp.With the eager assistance of the kidnap victim's high-powered tycoon father, the uneasy cooperation of his old unit's new commander, and precious little time before the trail goes cold, Jack and his trusty dog, Buster, hit the ground running. And they'll need all the help they can get--including backup from an FBI man with a personal stake in the hunt--as they follow a twisted trail from the ruins of a shuttered mental asylum with an infamous past to the streets of a sinister small town with a ghastly secret.With smooth-talking, uncompromising hero Jack Carpenter as guide, The Night Monster is an exhilarating journey into the heart of the American underworld. Bestselling author James Swain's fiendish plotting and energetic pacing will keep you electrified straight through till morning.From the Hardcover edition.

"In this series about gambling, the main character is a big winner."--Janet Maslin, The New York Times"Bask in Swain's Las Vegas without having to set foot in the place and risk being skinned alive."--The Washington Post Book WorldA 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.Featuring insider tips for catching poker cheats, as well as a glossary of card hustler terms!From the Paperback edition.

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.Featuring insider tips for catching poker cheats, as well as a glossary of card hustler terms!From the Paperback edition.

Hard-edged, evocative, brilliantly paced, James Swain's novels of crime and punishment in South Florida delve into a shadowy realm where criminals, victims, and cops share the same truths, the same lies, and sometimes even the same nightmares.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.With unremitting action and skillfully polished prose, bestselling author James Swain has written his most riveting thriller yet, delving even deeper into the fascinating psyche of misbehaving crusader Jack Carpenter. A hero immersed in the evil that is his prey, Carpenter battles a stunning betrayal--and a horrendous danger no one saw coming.From the Hardcover edition.

When vampiress Gwenna Carrick falls for handsome Vegas detective Nate Thomas, complications set in--the least of which is notorious vampire and ex-hubbie Roberto Donatelli.

The first four pages of this casino-themed debut are smashing--literally. Then James Swain, himself a gambling expert and professional magician, gets to the real story, and at that point, the plot starts churning out more twists than a corkscrew factory on overtime. Soon the characters are so enmeshed in their own self-serving lies, scams, and schemes that the only thing for a reader to do is just take a deep breath and let the steady barrage of surprises wash over him. There's no point in saying "take a deep breath and enjoy the scenery," because in Swain's Las Vegas, what one gazes upon is most likely to be a casino's gambling floor as viewed from security monitors. "Watching surveillance videos," he explains, "is a unique experience. The cameras filtered twice as much light as the human eye, and as a result hairpieces looked like rugs, cheap suits took on zebra stripes, and women wearing red dresses became naked. It was like entering the Twilight Zone." All too familiar with this eerie, totally paranoid, 24/7 universe is one-time Atlantic City cop Tony Valentine, who now runs a one-man consulting business he calls Grift Sense. To say of someone that he has that particular form of larcenous intuition, the author tells us, is "the highest compliment" one hustler can pay another. Grift sense means "that you not only knew how to do the moves, you also knew when to do them." And even if Valentine is 62 and settled in Florida, away from the action, he's never lost his ability to "feel when a hustle's going down, even if (he doesn't) know exactly what it is." That's why the Acropolis Resort & Casino is determined to lure him West to check out what looks like funny business going on between blond blackjack dealer Nola Briggs and a player named Frank Fontaine, who happens to be winning a little too steadily. Swain's easy expertise with the world of gaming and gamblers makes Grift Sense into a fascinating guidebook, as well as a vivid debut in a series that so far has a flavor all its own.

During a séance, psychic Peter Warlock is confronted by a group of evil spirits, beings who have the power to kidnap a person's soul. Peter is taken to another plane, where he confronts a serial killer about to claim his next victim. He soon realizes that the shadow people are connected to the serial killer, who is a member of a group of evil psychics who murdered his parents years ago. To save many lives, Peter may have to tap into a legacy that he has always dreaded--and a power that may consume him.--From publisher description.

Inventing a nephew of the great Houdini, escape artist Vincent Hardare, Swain crams his first novel with hyped-up exploits and characters. Grieving over his wife's recent death, Hardare is performing in London when he learns that his teenaged daughter Crystal is imprisoned in Mexico where she was on holiday from her Connecticut boarding school. Falsely accused of drug-dealing by crooked officials, Crystal and her cell-mate, CIA agent Maria Alvarez, rely on diplomatic measures for their release, but the U.S. government is strangely reluctant to intervene. In desperation, Hardare hires mercenary Frank Kincaid and a female partner, Jan Hargrove, to assist in the hardest trick of his career: breaking into the impenetrable dungeon and rescuing Crystal and Maria. The theatrics are exhaustively detailed but mesmerizing throughout, colored also by explanation of Hardare's marvelous feats, all inspired by Houdini. A magician himself, Swain adds authenticity by revealing some of the secrets of the profession. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved