GAMBLERS ROSE - Hardcover

HAWKES G.W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1849821925 ISBN 13: 9781849821926

Publisher: M P Publishing Limited, 2012

Synopsis

For generations they have known how to deal, when to fold, and how not to get backed into corners. They communicate with signs and quiet symbolism, and what they say is not what they mean. Like his father and brother, Charlie spends his young life manipulating everyone he meets into handing over just what he needs of them. But he's still playing in the kinds of games that leave scars. And he has just pushed one mark too many - a little further than he should

About this title

Review:

The hero of G.W. Hawkes's third novel is a card shark--just like his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. In fact, no Halloran within recent memory has held down an honest job. You might say the family has gambling in their blood--or, to be more precise, in their genes: "The double helix of our DNA is a gambler's rose," Charlie says. "You couldn't have become anything but a sharp" is how his father (the wonderfully named Music Halloran) puts it. "Someone or something else rolled those dice first." With or without marked decks and shaved dice, the profession still has its risks: Charlie's grandfather was killed with a welding torch and his cousin Dex was beaten with shovels until no one knew whether he'd wake up. Washed ashore in Hawaii after a run of bad luck, Charlie seems well on his way to upholding this part of the family tradition as well.

But then at a Honolulu hotel, he meets up with a professional mathematician (Charlie, naturally, is charging drinks to someone else's tab). A believer in the "rigid order in apparent randomness," Lia O'Donel studies turbulence, so of course she and Charlie fall in love. The pairing is odd but also oddly believable, and for the first time he thinks of going straight. To do so, however, he needs a stake, and there's only one way he knows how to earn it. Enter his father, brother, a stunning yacht named Music Hall, and a very high-stakes poker game. As all the players lay their cards on the table, Gambler's Rose combines some heavy thinking about chaos, fate, and design with rat-a-tat-tat Chandler-style dialogue and a stylishly cinematic plot. The combination is as readable as a two-bit hustler's bluff, and every bit as easy to take. --Chloe Byrne

About the Author:

G.W.Hawkes co-directs the creative writing program at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. He has published two previous novels Surveyor and Semaphore as well as two short story collections, Spies in the Blue Smoke and Playing Out of the Deep Woods. He has also had short stories published in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and GQ.

About this edition

• Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1849821925
• ISBN 13: 9781849821926
• Binding: Hardcover