Showing results by author "James Swain" in All Categories

When the Las Vegas's Riverboat Casino starts to burn down, bald, overweight Ricky Smith nosedives five floors into the pool. After this death-defying jump, Smith, a one-time loser, is miraculously transformed into a major-player winner. Battered and drenched, walking across the street to another casino, he begins a million-dollar winning streak at the tables.

Staving off his rendezvous with Old Sparky one appeal at a time, notorious serial killer Abb Smith wants ex-cop Jack Carpenter to find his grandson. Even stranger, the case involves Heather Rinker, a childhood friend of Jack's daughter. After making some bad choices in her short life, Heather now desperately needs Jack's help to save both herself and her young son from a murderer's grasp.

A 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.

Hard-boiled ex-cop Tony Valentine has a new profession: spotting casino cheats and exposing a casino's flaws to the owners. Now he must unravel the mystery of an amateur player impossibly raking in the dough on blackjack. However, his investigation stirs up a hornet's nest worth of problems.

Master grifter Billy Cunningham has built a lucrative career conning a long list of Las Vegas casinos. In fact, he's never walked into one he couldn't rip off. Now he's scheming a "super con" with a gang of high-profile cheats - a one-time-only scam that could rake in a cool multi-million-dollar payday.

Tough-as-nails abduction specialist Jack Carpenter is not easily spooked. But when he witnesses his daughter's college basketball teammate being violently abducted, Jack cannot suppress his horror. The kidnapper's face is one Jack recognizes from an unsolved case early in his career on the police force. With a deadly clock ticking, Jack is determined to rescue the abducted girl before it's too late.

Con artist Billy Cunningham is no stranger to the casinos of Las Vegas - he's ripped off every single one. But his latest scam - a year in the making - promises his crew their biggest payday yet. Billy has thought of everything down to the last detail...or so he thinks. He hasn't counted on the father-son team of contract killers looking to cash in on Billy's head. Or his old flame, Maggie Flynn, out for payback for her broken heart.

Tony Valentine is an expert at spotting cheats. He's tossed them out of gambling casinos from Atlantic City to 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 as a conman's deathbed confession turns into a deadly Las Vegas grudge match during the world's biggest poker tournament.

A disturbing missing-person case reunites ex-Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster and FBI Agent Beth Daniels. Skye is just one of a dozen young women who have disappeared from Florida without a trace. Beth can do more than just imagine their fear. She was a victim herself - a trauma that’s strengthened her fight for justice.

Nicki Pearl is the perfect daughter - every parent’s dream. And that of strangers, too. Wherever she goes, she’s being watched. Each stalker is different from the last, except for one thing - their alarming obsession with Nicki. Nicki’s father is turning to someone who can protect her: retired private detective and ex-Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster. Unlicensed, and unrestricted, he plays dirty. But this case is unusual. Why so many men? Why this one girl? Does Nicki have something to hide? Or do her parents? Trawling the darkest depths of southern Florida, Lancaster faces a growing tide of secrets and deception.

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.

The shocking suicide of Beth Daniels' father - a prominent surgeon - has thrown the FBI agent into a tailspin. But when Beth heads to Saint Augustine, Florida, for the funeral, she'll need more than the emotional support of her boyfriend, retired detective Jon Lancaster. She'll need his gut instinct for solving a mystery. No sooner do they arrive than suspicions are aroused. There's the pair of Russians who seem to be watching every move the family makes

A hardened ex-cop, Tony Valentine now nabs hustlers who rob casinos, and the Micanopy Indian Reservation Casino in South Florida desperately needs his expertise. A blackjack dealer has rigged a game, dealt a player 84 winning hands in a row, and then disappeared. But the missing dealer is part of an even bigger, far deadlier scheme. Valentine’s trail leads him to Rico Blanco, a ruthless gangster who once worked for John Gotti; his shady, elusive partner-in-crime, Victor Marks; and a bombshell named Candy Hart, a hooker with dreams of love - a combination tailor-made to double-cross.

In Shadow People, national best-selling author James Swain’s brilliant follow-up to Dark Magic, magician Peter Warlock has a dark secret. He’s a psychic who peers into the future, using the information to alert the authorities to pending trouble. During a séance, Peter is confronted by a group of evil spirits called shadow people, 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. It’s a harrowing encounter that Peter only barely manages to survive.

Tony Valentine made his living and his name as a cop in Atlantic City, and is now known worldwide for his ability to spot the kinds of scams, grifts, and rip-offs that cost casinos billions every year. A man with a biting wit who drives a '92 Honda, Tony is low-profile, old-school, and has seen it all, until he meets the luckiest man on earth.

Peter Warlock is a magician with a dark secret. Every night, he amazes audiences at his private theater in New York, where he performs feats that boggle the imagination. But his day job is just a cover for his otherworldly pursuits: Peter is a member of an underground group of psychics who gaze into the future to help prevent crimes. No one, not even his live-in girlfriend, knows the truth about Peter - until the séance when he foresees an unspeakable act of violence that will devastate the city.

Tony Valentine is a retired Atlantic City cop and a master hunter of casino cheats, or "grifters." He has the talent to spot cheats over a casino's surveillance cameras from the moment they come off the street and begin to take a part in the action. Valentine IDs his prey and moves in for the kill.

There are hundreds of casinos in Las Vegas, and Billy Cunningham knows how to rip off every one. His scams are a thing of beauty - so perfectly orchestrated that onlookers believe he and his crew are winning fair and square. In a town where bosses will kill to protect their profits, Billy can't afford to make mistakes, but even the best-laid plans can go wrong...

Years ago, South Florida cop Jack Carpenter beat up a murder suspect named Simon Skell, a dangerous predator with a penchant for playing the Rolling Stones' "Midnight Rambler" as he tortured young women. When Jack lost his temper, he lost his job and marriage, too; so as Skell's early release from prison draws near, the tarnished hero, now a specialist in missing-child cases, sees an opportunity to make things right.

The Hub for Important Ideas is a podcast about the serious issues of our time, hosted by cultural critics Stephen James and Ken Swain. They challenge conventional thinking about contemporary problems including Mental Health, Economic Inequality, the Environment, Bigotry, and War in intelligent conversations with thought leaders in various disciplines.   Drawing on the groundbreaking work of Ernest Becker, author of The Denial of Death, and the cutting-edge research of Terror Management Theory, this podcast  will  enable you to think through urgent issues. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/...