Joker Poker

Pat Gallegher has been running from his life for years. A failed seminary student, retired psychologist, and disgraced college professor, he finds himself in his late forties playing jazz cornet in a New Orleans French Quarter bar.One meeting with Clancey Vincouer changes his life. She tells him the sordid story of her affair with a con man named Sammy Cain, who has disappeared. Clancey fears that Lester Vincouer, her husband, has had Cain killed. Gallegher searches for Cain, and uncovers a twisted arrangement between Lester and the New Orleans mob. When Lester Vincouer is murdered, Gallegher realizes he has been cleverly framed.The search for Sammy Cain becomes a quest for the real killer of Lester Vincouer, and everyone seems to have a motive-including the leggy, seductive redhead with whom Gallegher has fallen head-over-heels in lust. With a tenacious police detective dogging his trail, Gallegher has only days to discover who really killed Vincouer, or the next tune he plays might be his swan song-on Death Row Richard Helms' Pat Gallegher series has been nominated for the PWA Shamus Award, the ITW Thriller Award, the SMFS Derringer Award, and the MRI Macavity Award.