Bluff - Jane Stanton Hitchcock

Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

In poker, a good hand can only take you so far. You need to apply the art of the bluff, making your opponent lay down, or fold, a better hand than what you’re holding. Essentially you are telling your opponent a story you hope they will believe. 

This read is a clever and charming mixture of murder most fowl and the game of high stakes poker.  When one time socialite “Mad Maud” shoots the “Pope of Finance”, everyone believes she missed her true target, Burt.  A man who stole her families fortune and drove her loved ones to early graves.

With the story dealt like a poker hand, the reader will need to keep their eyes on the moves through a flop, a turn, and the river.

Somehow Maud is able to waltz right out of the busy restaurant in which she committed the brazen crime, finding herself on the run.  Meanwhile back at the scene of this high-class carnage, soap opera level twists and sleight of hand stun the upper class.

Full of snobby high society bashes, gossipy social climbers hungry for melodrama and crass hangers on looking to be dusted with castoff glitter, this was a delightful read.

If you were to ask what life lessons you could take away from this book, one would most certainly be this; he who underestimates women of a certain age does so at his own peril!

P.S. I refrained from quoting lyrics from Kenny Rogers’ song The Gambler throughout this review but know that I really really wanted to.

Book Pairing(s): Blanche On The Lam by Barbara Neely, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, Murder At The Book Club by Betsy Reavley