High stakes on the high seas in the second Poker mystery.
Amateur Texas Hold ‘Em champ Belinda Cooley, aka “Bee Cool,” boards a high-stakes poker cruise, and loses her cool when her fellow poker pros start disappearing. It seems someone is out to turn the card sharks into shark bait-and Belinda may be next.
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More fun for Bee Cool!,
I think the other two reviewers are taking this too seriously. This series is for pure enjoyment. Most of it is “out there”, but it is meant to be.
Personally, I liked this one just as well if not better than its predecessor, “Death on the Flop”, maybe because I am now familiar with the characters.
My only gripe is there’s no author info, that drives me nuts!
I’m off to find “Hold -em hostage”. And I hope Ms. Chance keeps on gambling with this series.
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|I feel embarassed for the lead character.,
I enjoyed this author’s first “Poker Mystery,” which, while quirky, was very funny. After two days, and I ordinarily read quite rapidly, I have not been able to get past the first third of the book. This is simply because I feel acute embarassment for the lead character. She is supposed to be a 40-year-old woman who has worked successfully in advertising, at least for several years, but allows her manipulative brother to put her into intolerable situations. It is simply too implausable for a woman of this age, who appears to be very attractive to other men, to let an amoral and irresponsible family member get away with doing things that are basically dishonest.
If she had slapped him down in one of the early scenes and stood up for her rights, it would have given her greater cachet and allowed the reader to laugh WITH her, instead of making her look like a sad wimp and laughing AT her.
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|Much better than Death on the Flop,
I see andiesenji’s point, but continued reading would have shown the heroine rescuing herself once (her behavior, such as wearing stilletto heels while climbing stairs on a ship in a storm, requires five male rescues, two by boyfriend, one by father, two by unrelated males). She stands up for herself a few times (only against women), instead of either crying or running away as she did in the first book. In fact, she doesn’t cry in the entire book. She spends a bit less time silently lusting, and seems to have some other interests in life. The plot has improved from non-existent to merely silly. I gave Death on the Flop one star because Amazon doesn’t let you rate any lower, Cashed In earned one star.
Another major plus is Penguin Group has wisely dropped the claim that the book gives valuable poker tips, although the author still appends a chapter of non-fiction poker advice. Death on the Flop contained 12 poker hands, all with major errors. Cashed In is an improvement, it has only 9 hands. The first one (page 167) has a flush beating four Aces, but then comes an impressive run of four (pages 139, 143, 145 and 179) without anything impossible happening. That’s almost half the hands. There are major strategic problems, like six people calling all-in with four suited cards on the board, and statistical problems like frequent royal flushes, and the money amounts vary implausibly with some illegal raises, but at least the author or an editor appears to be dimly grasping some poker rules.
Starting at page 187, with two rounds of betting before the flop, we’re back to errors. On page 247, the heroine reraises after her raise is called. On page 248 she is the chip leader and wins an all-in bet, but the loser is not eliminated. Six players go all-in on one hand, using all their chips. This means they started with exactly the same amounts, which is virtually impossible in the middle of a tournament. Page 252 is a possible hand under the rules, but involves an experienced professional tight player calling an all-in bet with a 4h Tc Kh Ad Ah board, holding only a K, and being shocked when he loses.
Only an author and publisher with deep contempt for readers would sell non-fiction poker advice written by someone who has not even bothered to learn the rank of the hands or rules of play.
Like the first book, this one is packed with filler descriptions of eating and dressing, with the author forgetting what she wrote a page or two later. The heroine gorges herself on chocolate at three in the morning, then tells the reader she hasn’t eaten for 18 hours when she wakes up at noon the next day. She takes three pages putting on a spaghetti-strap minidress, which somehow grows lapels (or at least one lapel) the minute she walks out of the room. This kind of sloppiness disqualifies the book as a mystery, of course, but it also shows the author is filling up pages rather than telling a story.
This isn’t a great book, it’s no Bimbos of the Death Sun. But it’s much better than the first one of the series.
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