It almost ruined the
experience for me. Luckily, the author got them
out of town before I got up and threw the book out.
(The one glaring exception to the above was Mario
Puzo’s Fools Die, a brilliant book.)
So, when Kevin Blackwood’s
book came to me, it had to face my distrust of gambling
fiction, and also the fact that I have never heard
of the publisher. The book had obviously been read
in galley form by some prominent gaming authorities
as the back cover was liberally sprinkled with quotes
about its virtues.
Good enough to give
me a reason to read some of it.
So I started reading.
Immediately I was struck with a scene that I felt
was labored and false. The protagonist, Raven Townsend,
is playing at a casino and a young lady, obviously
a chip hustler or hooker, is asking questions. The
dealer is explaining the essence of card counting
to her. Those questions were heavy-handedly designed,
it seemed to me, to inform the readers about the
mechanics of card counting and I thought, “this
book is going to be laborious. I’ll give it
thirty pages.”
It didn’t take
thirty pages. Once that initial, and strained, conversation
took place, the book took off. I couldn’t put
it down. Blackwood weaved a world of professional
blackjack with a quest for truth and identity, a
love lost and found, and a rollicking series of
adventures that culminated in a showdown at the
conclusion that was teeth clenching and stomach
tightening.
The Counter is a book that is everything its blurbs
say it is. The blackjack information is right on
the money. Scene after crackling scene I kept saying
to myself: “I’ve been there and done that,
wow!” Mr. Blackwood knows the game inside and
out, and he has liberally sprinkled the book with,
I believe, true life adventures and thinly veiled
true-life characters. (Blackjack buffs might be
able to pin down these characters!)
Still a work of fiction
has to be more than just a series of blackjack anecdotes,
no matter how appealing. Such anecdotes are fine
for nonfiction, how-to books in order to take away
the tedium of reading serious strategic matters.
A work of fiction has to have a search for truth,
be it the little truth of an individual’s existence
that we can relate to or be it the big truths about
the very nature of existence itself. A novel has
to be, well, novel, in the strictest sense of that
word. Otherwise why get involved? Why not just live
your own life, which is novel enough?
The
Counter Book Review Part 2
Good
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