Lucky at Cards

When the Hard Case Crime series started three years ago, I read the first two--The Grifter's Game and Fade to Blonde, and enjoyed them both, but didn't keep up with them. They've had a steady output of at least a title per month since then, so I'm going to try to catch up. For my next read I chose Lucky at Cards, a novel first published pseudonymously by Lawrence Block back in 1964.

Block also wrote The Grifter's Game, and of course has gone on to be one of the most esteemed crime writers, with his Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr series. Lucky at Cards shares some of the skeleton that The Grifter's Game does--a con man finds himself seduced by a femme fatale who convinces him to try to do away with her husband. Things don't go as planned.

There are differences, though, that make Lucky at Cards so much fun. The story is narrated by a card shark, Bill Maynard, who after getting caught cheating by some toughs in Chicago gets his teeth broken. He's in an unnamed town between Chicago and New York and gets his teeth fixed by a dentist, and the subject of poker comes up. The dentist invites Bill to a friendly game, and there he meets Joyce Rogers, the much-younger wife of Murray Rogers, a prominent tax attorney. She's had a dicey past, and recognizes him as a "mechanic," (a term for someone who cheats at cards) and they hatch a scheme to get Murray's money. He has an airtight will, though, so killing him won't do any good. Instead Bill tries to frame him for murder.

Block's style is effortless and smooth. As it was written over 40 years ago there are some amusing lines, particularly about money (sixty dollars to fix teeth, and a 10,000 a year job being good money). There's also a rather unenlightened attitude towards women, not only in the figure of Joyce, but in a schoolteacher Bill falls in love with who would have done well to read Betty Friedan. But the twists and turns are a lot of fun, and the book ends with perhaps the only time in literature that a man is playing gin rummy with his life on the line.