"Bluff" was one of the books that pop up in my emails from either Book Bub or Amazon's "Kindle Recommendations for You", can't remember which one, that you can download not your Kindle for $1.99. This one seemed interesting, so I let the moths fly out of my wallet and spent the buck ninety-nine.
The story begins when a woman walks into a swanky New York City restaurant, one frequented by NYC power brokers and the high society Ladies Who Lunch crowd, proceeds to shoot a guy, walks out of the restaurant, and goes on the lam.
What follows is a story about high society mores in NYC, and high-level swindling scheme, and how three ladies plot to gain revenge upon the swindler. One of the protagonists - part of the book is told in her first person viewpoint - is a high level poker player, and she tells the story using the analogy of a high stakes poker game. Don't worry, though, you don't have to be a poker player to follow along.
After finishing the book, I went to the Google Machine to learn a little more about the author. Jane Stanton Hitchcock comes from the high society milieu that she writes about in "Bluff", and her family was bilked out of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme run by a guy named Ken Starr (not the Ken Starr who headed the investigation that went after Bill Clinton in the 1990's; this guy eventually went to prison for his deeds) whose victims included celebrities like Sly Stallone, Carly Simon, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, and others, and she is a serious poker player. So, as Stanton has been quoted, the story of "Bluff" is very much like her own story, minus the murder, of course. I kind of wish that I had known all of this before I read the book.
Jane Stanton Hitchcock
In 2019, Santon and "Bluff" were named winner of the Dashiell Hammett Award by the International Association of Crime Writers. I enjoyed this book, and will be looking to read some of the other mystery novels that she has written.
Three Stars from The Grandstander.
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