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    Lucky at Cards
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    Lucky at Cards
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    Lucky at Cards
    Ebook197 pages3 hours

    Lucky at Cards

    By Lawrence Block

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A good card mechanic is hard to find and even harder to change     His dentist’s poker game is the last place that card shark Bill Maynard expects to find another hustler. But that’s just what Mrs. Murray Rogers, the scheming wife with her eye on her husband’s fortune, is. The only problem is her husband’s still alive, and she’ll have to enlist the help of Bill in order to get what she wants. They’ve got a plan, but will Bill stick with it, or will the square life lull him into breaking his lucky streak?   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from his personal collection, and a new afterword written by the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateDec 28, 2010
    ISBN9781453208427
    Unavailable
    Lucky at Cards
    Author

    Lawrence Block

    Lawrence Block is one of the most widely recognized names in the mystery genre. He has been named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and is a four-time winner of the prestigious Edgar and Shamus Awards, as well as a recipient of prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. He received the Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association—only the third American to be given this award. He is a prolific author, having written more than fifty books and numerous short stories, and is a devoted New Yorker and an enthusiastic global traveler.

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    Reviews for Lucky at Cards

    4/5

    59 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      He’s a ‘card mechanic’ - someone who cheats at cards. But that's not all he cheats at...It's a decent book, but very much like other books like this that I have read. Man meets other man's wife and instantly must have her. Then cooks up some plan to get rid of the other man. And so on, and so on. This story is a little different, with its big focus on card playing and card cheating, but it follows the standard plotline of these type of books. And it has the usual ending. The dude should have stuck to what he himself thought: "Don't gamble. Stick to your trade and don't take chances." 'Nuff said.
    • 5/5
      Originally released in 1964 as “The Sex Shuffle” under the by-line Sheldon Lord, it is a real coup for the Hard Case Crime imprint getting this to print as Block is notoriously reticent about his early pseudonymous books. This one deserves rediscovery – it is another cracking, hard-boiled, pot-boiler from Block. Bill Maynard, an ex-magician, now professional card mechanic has been run out of Chicago, with smashed teeth and broken thumbs, after having being caught scamming the wrong people. Washing up in an out-of-the-way burg he ends up in the company of a group wealthy gents who play a weekly poker game. Bill falls in lust with the sexy (ex-prostitute?) wife of one of the card players and the pair are soon plotting an elaborate scam to make off with her husband’s fortune. Their clever plan is going well until another woman enters the scene and Bill and Joyce’s scheme begins to rapidly and dangerously unravel. Block’s writing is first class – the pace is brisk throughout and the plot is appropriately complex and convoluted, with a twist coming on top of the twist ending. The dialogue is sparse, clever and tough talking throughout. The descriptions of poker play and the strategies of a cardsharp are interwoven throughout the book and are quite compelling in and of themselves. “Lucy At Cards” is an excellent pulp crime novel, with Block once again showing his skill at drawing readers in by building a riveting and overpowering sense of suspense.
    • 4/5
      William Maynard, a former magician turned card shark, was run out of Chicago following a botched poker scheme. Following a nasty dust up, Bill befriends a dentist and finds himself with an invitation to a low stakes card game. It’s there that he meets Joyce, the sultry wife of tax lawyer Murray Rogers. Before long, Bill finds himself tangled up in the sheets with Joyce and the two hatch a plan to frame Murray for murder, eliminating him from the picture. Will their plan succeed or will Bill’s luck run out once again?

      While the story progressed swiftly and the twists and turns refused to let up, it’s the banter between the characters as well as Bill’s narration that kept me from putting the book down. Granted, my knowledge isn’t the strongest when it comes to card games – I barely know how to play anything outside of Go Fish – I rarely felt intimidated when Block gave the play-by-play in describing Bill’s cheating methods It’s not like he held my hand or over explained things, Block kept the scenes moving smoothly and was careful not to get bogged down in the technical aspects of it all.

      Now that I’ve got a few of these Hardcase Crime novels under my belt, I can easily say that this was the most sex-driven yet. While I’m sure there may be others on the horizon that will give Lucky At Cards a run for its money, this takes the cake for the time being. Hey, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a complaint, the sex scenes aren’t overly gratuitous by any means nor are they really all that lengthy, they’re just abundant I suppose.

      While Bill’s not really that likeable – he’s a card shark who specializes in cheating others – you just can’t help but root for him to succeed. It’s bewildering to say the least. It’s not like Block does him any favors. Even if he shows the smallest glimmer of light escaping from Bill’s criminally hardened facade, he quickly covers him in another layer of scum. This is the great thing about the pulps of this era, the characters are deeply flawed so their decisions aren’t always the right ones, which makes the story wholly unpredictable.

      Lucky at Cards is another exceptional release from the folks at Hardcase Crime who continue to strive to keep this genre alive and well.
    • 3/5
      What's not to love about this book. Vintage Block. A card sharp winds up in a small town to get his teeth fixed, gets in a card game where he uses his card skills to win some money, is recognized as a card shark by the host's beautiful wife who wants out of her marriage, they conspire, but the card shark falls for a local school teacher and the con begins to collapse around him. Sounds hokey, but in Black's deft hand, it works, and you keep reading. The book was first written under a different name in the sixties and my goodness it's astonishing how much smoking everyone did. Not a great book, obviously, but a good fun read. My hat's off to Hard Case Crime books for bringing many of these books back into print.
    • 4/5
      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...
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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."