"Dead Man's Hand" review, part 5

The next story in line is "Poker and Shooter," by Sue DeNymme. This is the tale of a high school hazing gone bad, and it only passingly mentions poker. I found it most unpleasant, primarily because there is not a single likable character in it. They are all pretty despicable, and I don't think any reader could care what happens to them. Waste of space.

"The Monks of the Abbey Victoria," by Rupert Holmes, is a clever and enjoyable piece. Our narrator, the new guy at NBC headquarters in New York, circa 1960, is invited to join the weekly poker game held by some of his new co-workers. But at the first session, there's something strange going on, which our hero can't quite put a finger on. Turns out that the poker game is simply a cover for something more nefarious--and even that may not be quite what it seems. Beyond that I cannot go without spoiler alerts. But the twists are a pleasure to encounter.

We now switch to the first British story in the collection, Peter Robinson's "The Eastvale Ladies' Poker Circle." Sadly, as with a couple of other stories here, poker plays such a marginal role that it's hard to see how they qualify as "Crime Fiction at the Poker Table" (the book's subtitle). Here, a monthly poker game is simply the alibi for one of the suspects in a murder. That's it. The story is a fairly bland whodunit otherwise. Nothing particularly wrong with it, but little that I found particularly enjoyable or memorable.

Eric Van Lustbader wrote "The Uncertainty Principle." It's about an 18-year-old woman who runs an underground poker game in Reno with her father. What she will do with her life apparently comes down to what she will do in one huge hand of poker. But the author leaves us hanging at the end, without resolution. That made the entire reading experience frustrating. Thumbs down.

"Hardly Knew Her" is by Laura Lippman. It centers on the strained relationship between a 16-year-old tomboy and her degenerate gambler father. The children in the family grew up being unable to be sure anything they valued would stay with them, because their father would pawn or sell any valuables in order to get into a weekly poker game, at which he was obviously not very good. Our heroine, Sofia, accepts this unpleasant reality mostly with equanimity, but finally her dad goes too far, and she has to resort to extreme measures to get back what he has taken from her. Once again, poker is just too far in the background for this to be considered a poker story. You could just substitute an addiction to sports betting for poker, and nothing here would change.

OK, just two more stories to go and I'll finally be done with the book!