Showing results by author "James Swain" in All Categories

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.

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.

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.

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...

WHOEVER SAYS CRIME DOESN’T PAY ISN’T DOING IT RIGHT. Billy Cunningham is the most wanted cheat in Las Vegas. His scams have cost the casinos so much money that the governor has ordered the gaming board to bring him in at any cost. Normally, Billy would lay low until the dust settles. But during a trip to Reno, he has a chance encounter with Special Agent Ray Lopez of the FBI. Billy helps Lopez catch a pair of serial killers called The Glitter Twins and a bond is formed. Lopez is a hero with a fatal flaw. He’s a gambling addict with huge debts. Seeing an opportunity, Billy recruits ...

THE PROGRAM PRODUCT DESCRIPTION From the national bestselling mystery novelist the Wall Street Journal calls “One terrific writer” comes a heart-pounding thriller pitting a deadly serial killer against two determined FBI agents. Is it possible to create a serial killer? FBI Special Agent Ken Linderman (last seen alongside Jack Carpenter in bestseller The Night Monster) is about to find out. A serial killer has kidnaped seventeen-year-old Wayne Ladd, and is putting the boy through the Program, a fiendish project designed to turn young boys into raging killers. Along with hot-headed FBI ...

The New York Times Review of Books Have you heard the one about the canny granny who won a pot of money by card-counting on her rosary beads? How about the mother-and-son team whose method of palming cards at the blackjack table was ''pure poetry''? And what about the sweet techniques of guys like Jake the Snake and Larry the Lightbulb? James Swain, who came to his expertise on gambling hustles by way of his skills as a sleight-of-hand magician, uses the crooked play of these inspired cheats to pull us into GRIFT SENSE, a flashy, funny novel about a cool scam to break the bank at a Las ...

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

DEADLY PLEASURES MAGAZINE Review by George Easter I’ve been a big fan of this series since its inception with GRIFT SENSE. Swain has a natural gift for storytelling. The various scams are fascinating in their ingenuity and for the clever detection that thwarts them. And Tony Valentine and his crew are among my favorite characters in crime fiction. It’s a shame that this and JACKPOT are only available on the Kindle (or on an IPad with a free Kindle app – which is how I read them). He’s also published two other e-book originals – one a Jack Carpenter novel and the other a stand-...

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.

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.

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.

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.