I've been cheated--by a book

A few months ago I made my way to the Gambler's Bookshop. It's is only a mile or so from my apartment building, but I hadn't had much reason to stop in, what with Amazon.com and all. I ended up buying a stack of books, some of them poker-related fiction that I had never heard of.

Among them was the one pictured above, Deadman's Poker, by James Swain. I finished reading it a few minutes ago. I can't remember ever feeling so angry at an author upon concluding a novel.

The story involves a retired cop, Tony Valentine, turned private consultant to casinos on cheaters and scams that they face. This is apparently the sixth Valentine novel. I don't really dislike the character, but also don't find him particularly interesting. He's well-off, always virtuous, can handle himself in a fistfight, always out-maneuvers the bad guys, makes all the sharp deductions from the clues, etc. In other words, he's too good to be true. OK, I can live with that, if it gets me to a good story.

I was aware going in that a good story was the most I could expect. From quickly hashed-out serial novels of this sort, I'm not expecting great literature, insights into the human condition, etc. I understand that such books exist only for the plot. Characters are there to be part of the plot, or they don't show up at all. You can even stick a mental label on what part each character plays. There's the always-messing-up son so that Valentine has somebody repeatedly in jeopardy that he needs to bail out. There's the secretary who coordinates information. There's a guy who is only there so that Tony has somebody to whom to explain how casinos run, how security works, how cheaters ply their trade, etc., while we readers listen in.

The story revolves around a thinly disguised World Series of Poker. An unlikely player is running away with it, and there's plenty of reason to think that he's cheating, but nobody can figure out how.

Frankly, the book was so lame overall that it took me about three months to finish it, because I kept setting it aside from lack of interest, and read other things instead. When I finished my formal education many years ago, I vowed that I would never again feel compelled to finish a book I wasn't enjoying; the freedom not to finish reading something that isn't interesting and/or enjoyable is a precious thing. The only thing that kept me coming back to Deadman's Poker was curiosity about how the scam was being pulled off. Valentine narrows it down to marked cards that a corrupt dealer can read and somehow signal to a player, but neither he nor the FBI nor the Nevada Gaming Commission experts can spot any markings.

But the novel ends abruptly, without this central question being answered. It doesn't actually end--it just stops. Then the reader is treated to a preview of the first chapter of Swain's next novel, Deadman's Bluff. Only then does the reader learn the ugly truth, that the book he has just finished isn't actually a novel, but just half a novel. You have to buy the "sequel" to finish the story and learn how it all falls out. (I suspect that it involves radium or some other radioactive material as the marker.)

There is no indication anywhere on the book that this is the case. Nothing marks it as being "Part 1 of 2," or anything like that. (I scanned in the front and back covers above, so you can verify this yourself.) The only hint is the plug for the next volume, but nothing suggests how the two are related.

Had I read the reviews on Amazon.com before buying it, I would have been adequately warned. One reader writes, "Half a book. The writing is great and the build up to the end is great but there is no payoff. We have to buy the next book to figure out what is going to happen (I think). Frustrating and disappointing." Another writes, "I assume that the rest of this book and the 2nd one were boring because the author (editor/publisher) were trying to stretch this out to sell twice as many books. If you just read this book and not the 2nd you really will be unhappy (1 star happy)." A third writes, "You should probably get Dead Man's Bluff at the same time if you wish to see the plot fully resolved."

See why I tend to shop online rather than yield to impulse purchases in bookstores? I wouldn't have started with an unknown author if I had known this up front.

I think this is a dirty, nasty trick for an author and publisher to pull. Yeah, I'll probably read the stupid sequel to gain a modicum of resolution and satisfaction about the whole thing, but only because I found a used copy on Amazon.com for $0.46, which is not only nearly free, but ensures that this scummy author and publisher won't profit another nickel from my wallet as a payoff for their underhanded cheating. It will absolutely be the last Swain novel I ever touch. An author with so little regard for his readers doesn't deserve being rewarded with followers or with royalties.