Face Card — John Lucas

Someone is trying to kill Dennis Gilbert and not having much success. As the victims pile up, Dennis sets out to find out why he’s being targeted before more people die. Living on the streets for the past two years doesn’t make him the most credible victim and the police offer little in the way of assistance or compassion for the high-tech entrepreneur, turned gambler, turned vagrant. Running out of options, Dennis turns to a private investigator to find the perpetrators.Linda Parker is newly single, again, and after her husband leaves her one paycheck away from foreclosure, she’s forced to endure the roaming hands and sexual advances of her lecherous boss to make ends meet. Linda’s life is turned upside down when Dennis walks through her office door. There’s something she sees in him, something that attracts her and makes her willing to take a leap of faith, risking her home and financial well being to help him find the killers.The problem is money and they’re going to need lots of it to track down the people trying to kill Dennis. With help from an old friend, Phil Landers, a man crippled by Dennis’s recklessness, Dennis goes back to the one thing he does better than anyone else in Atlantic City, play poker.The action moves from the backstreets and alleys of Atlantic City, where tourists never travel, to the sprawling poker rooms of the boardwalk gambling palaces. Dennis tries to build his future at the poker tables while trying to figure out which part of his past is out to kill him. The answer might just be in the cards.