James Swain has 16 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 9 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is Super Con.
Super Con
Summary
An adrenaline rush of cons, grift, and murder in a town where deadly double-dealing is the name of the game. Master grifter Billy Cunningham has built a lucrative career conning a long list of Las Vegas casinos. In fact, he's never walked into one he couldn't rip off. Now he's scheming a "super con" with a gang of high-profile cheats - a one-time-only scam that could rake in a cool multi-million-dollar payday. All goes as planned until Chinese crime lord Broken Tooth strong-arms Billy into rigging the Super Bowl, too. Billy has no choice but to play ball. Broken Tooth has a special edge on him: blackmail. When someone on his own team betrays Billy, all bets are off. Both the super con and Super Bowl gambits are in jeopardy. And just who's scamming who? With kickoff time looming, it'll take a Hail Mary pass for Billy to grift the game and survive long enough to pull off the wildest double-cross-with-a-twist in Vegas history.
©2017 James Swain (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Blonde Over Blue words and music by Billy Joel © 1993 IMPULSIVE MUSIC. All Rights Administered by ALMO MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
Bad Action
Summary
Con artist Billy Cunningham is no stranger to the casinos of Las Vegas - he's ripped off every single one. But his latest scam - a year in the making - promises his crew their biggest payday yet. Billy has thought of everything down to the last detail...or so he thinks. He hasn't counted on the father-son team of contract killers looking to cash in on Billy's head. Or his old flame, Maggie Flynn, out for payback for her broken heart. If Billy and his team can pass themselves off as high rollers for a week straight, living it up in Vegas's most exclusive suites and box seats, they'll get their chance to make their VIP status permanent. It's the biggest scam of their lives - if they live.
©2016 James Swain (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Deadman's Poker
Summary
Tony Valentine is an expert at spotting cheats. He's tossed them out of gambling casinos from Atlantic City to Monaco. But though Tony has never met a scam he couldn't crack, his son and partner, Gerry, has just walked into one with a body count. What started as a conman's deathbed confession turns into a deadly Las Vegas grudge match during the world's biggest poker tournament. While Gerry tangles with the Vegas mob, Tony enlists the aid of an aging grifter to save the tournament, and stop a blind player who's out to heist it.
©2006 James Swain (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America
Deadman's Bluff
Summary
A blind poker player named Skip DeMarco is scamming the world's largest poker tournament in Las Vegas, and cheating expert Tony Valentine and his son, Gerry, have been hired to find out how. DeMarco is tied to some dangerously desperate characters who will go to extremes - even cold-blooded murder - to ensure that the obnoxious DeMarco wins big. While Gerry flies to Atlantic City to suss out DeMarco’s secret, Valentine stays in Vegas and teams up with an aging grifter named Rufus Steele, who has his own score to settle with DeMarco. On opposite sides of a deadly game, father and son work their way through a colorful landscape of con men and hit men.
©2006 James Swain (P)2010 AudioGo
Mr. Lucky
Summary
When the Las Vegas's Riverboat Casino starts to burn down, bald, overweight Ricky Smith nosedives five floors into the pool. After this death-defying jump, Smith, a one-time loser, is miraculously transformed into a major-player winner. Battered and drenched, walking across the street to another casino, he begins a million-dollar winning streak at the tables. But ex-cop Tony Valentine soon arrives, begged by the Strip's casino owners to prove that Smith's ("Mr. Lucky's") impossibly successful winning streak isn't on the square. With his finely honed grift sense and a knack for spotting cheats, Tony Valentine finds he has few alternatives, and all of them are treacherous.
©2005 James Swain (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.
Sucker Bet
Summary
In the world of gambling and sleight-of-hand, Jim Swain is considered one of the best. In the late 1980s, Swain was tipped off to a major scam which had taken place at the Golden Nugget casino in Las Vegas. Fascinated both by the scam and by the casino's inability to capture the cheats, Swain began to research the shady and seldom-discussed world of casino cheating, and created the character of Tony Valentine. Valentine is a retired Atlantic City cop and a master hunter of casino cheats, or "grifters." He has the talent to spot cheats over a casino's surveillance cameras from the moment they come off the street and begin to take a part in the action. Valentine IDs his prey and moves in for the kill.
©2003 James Swain (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
Dark Magic
Summary
Peter Warlock is a magician with a dark secret. Every night, he amazes audiences at his private theater in New York, where he performs feats that boggle the imagination. But his day job is just a cover for his otherworldly pursuits: Peter is a member of an underground group of psychics who gaze into the future to help prevent crimes. No one, not even his live-in girlfriend, knows the truth about Peter - until the séance when he foresees an unspeakable act of violence that will devastate the city. As Peter and his friends rush to prevent tragedy, Peter discovers that a shadowy cult of evil psychics, the Order of Astrum, know all about his abilities. They are hunting him and his fellow psychics down, one by one, determined to silence them forever.
©2012 James Swain (P)2012 AudioGO
Take Down
Summary
Whoever says crime doesn't pay isn't doing it right. There are hundreds of casinos in Las Vegas, and Billy Cunningham knows how to rip off every one. His scams are a thing of beauty - so perfectly orchestrated that onlookers believe he and his crew are winning fair and square. In a town where bosses will kill to protect their profits, Billy can't afford to make mistakes, but even the best-laid plans can go wrong... Desperate to keep his team out of jail, Billy agrees to help stop a legendary family of thieves from taking down a casino. But he has no intention of breaking the cheater's code: never rat out your own kind. He's running his own con on the casino's psycho owner and his vicious, violent wife. Throw in a murderous drug dealer, a vengeful gaming agent, and the girl Billy's never forgotten, and this scam artist is playing for sky-high stakes: a cool eight million, and the chance to live long enough to spend it.
©2015 James Swain (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Murder in Vegas
Summary
Sin City. An artificial oasis of pleasure, spectacle, and entertainment, the gambling capital of America has reinvented itself so many times that it's doubtful that anyone knows for sure what's real and what isn't in the miles of neon and scorching heat. Las Vegas is considered the ultimate player's destination, no matter what your game. Almost anything is available - for a price, mind you - and sometimes losers will walk away from the tables with even less than just an empty wallet or purse; sometimes they don't walk away at all. Las Vegas is the true city that never sleeps, where fortunes are made and lost every day, and where snake-eyes aren't found just on a pair of dice. Contributors include James Swain, S. Z. Rozan, Wendy Hornsby, Michael Collins, T. P. Keating, J. Madison Davis, Sue Pike, Joan Richter, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Tom Savage, Edward Wellin, K.j.a. Wishnia, Linda Kerslake, John Wessel, Lise McClendon, Ronnie Klaskin, Ruth Cavin, A. B. Robbins, Gay Toltl Kinman, Micki Marz, Rick Mofina, and Jeremiah Healy.
©2010 Michael Connelly (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Loaded Dice
Summary
Hard-boiled ex-cop Tony Valentine has a new profession: spotting casino cheats and exposing a casino's flaws to the owners. Now he must unravel the mystery of an amateur player impossibly raking in the dough on blackjack. However, his investigation stirs up a hornet's nest worth of problems. First of all, the suspect bears a distinct resemblance to Valentine's late wife; second, she's captured on a video surveillance tape with Valentine's lifelong enemy; third, his son Gerry is also in Las Vegas, getting lessons in illegal card-counting. Valentine now sees a new breed of criminal in Vegas, one who is not after money but, instead, is after maximum destruction of human life. It's up to Tony to stop the killings, or risk losing everything he holds dear.
©2004 James Swain (P)2004 Books on Tape
No Good Deed
Summary
A human-trafficking case hits dangerously close to home in a heart-racing thriller by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The King Tides. A disturbing missing-person case reunites ex-Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster and FBI Agent Beth Daniels. Skye is just one of a dozen young women who have disappeared from Florida without a trace. Beth can do more than just imagine their fear. She was a victim herself - a trauma that’s strengthened her fight for justice. Then Lancaster uncovers a scrap of evidence, and the mystery begins to unravel. But the lead comes with a personal sting: the involvement of his estranged brother, Logan, an ex-con recruited into the shepherding of human trade. The only way for Logan to shed his demons is to come clean. For Lancaster and Daniels, that means being drawn, secret by secret, into a dangerous underground world. With time running out, three damaged pasts will collide; more secrets will spill; and Lancaster, Daniels, and Logan will have to fight to save themselves first if they ever hope to find the girls alive.
©2019 James Swain (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Night Monster
Summary
Tough-as-nails abduction specialist Jack Carpenter is not easily spooked. But when he witnesses his daughter's college basketball teammate being violently abducted, Jack cannot suppress his horror. The kidnapper's face is one Jack recognizes from an unsolved case early in his career on the police force. With a deadly clock ticking, Jack is determined to rescue the abducted girl before it's too late. In this skillfully written, immensely satisfying novel, best-selling author James Swain shocks and thrills from first page to last.
©2009 James Swain (P)2009 BBC Audio
The Night Stalker
Summary
Ex-cop Jack Carpenter is the type of guy criminals avoid, so he's surprised to receive a summons from Florida state prison's death row. Staving off his rendezvous with Old Sparky one appeal at a time, notorious serial killer Abb Smith wants Carpenter to find his grandson. Even stranger, the case involves Heather Rinker, a childhood friend of Jack's daughter. After making some bad choices in her short life, Heather now desperately needs Jack's help to save both herself and her young son from a murderer's grasp.
©2008 James Swain (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks
Midnight Rambler
Summary
Years ago, South Florida cop Jack Carpenter beat up a murder suspect named Simon Skell, a dangerous predator with a penchant for playing the Rolling Stones' "Midnight Rambler" as he tortured young women. When Jack lost his temper, he lost his job and marriage, too; so as Skell's early release from prison draws near, the tarnished hero, now a specialist in missing-child cases, sees an opportunity to make things right. But his mission uncovers a shocking criminal conspiracy and soon Jack is trying to outwit, outrun, and outmaneuver his enemies.
©2007 James Swain (P)2007 BBC Audiobooks America
The King Tides
Summary
Reality and illusion blur for an ex-Navy SEAL investigating a deadly case of stalking in this addictive thriller that Michael Connelly calls “a hundred percent adrenaline rush disguised as a detective novel.” Nicki Pearl is the perfect daughter - every parent’s dream. And that of strangers, too. Wherever she goes, she’s being watched. Each stalker is different from the last, except for one thing - their alarming obsession with Nicki. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Nicki’s father is turning to someone who can protect her: retired private detective and ex-Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster. Teaming up with FBI agent and former abduction victim Beth Daniels, Lancaster can help - his way. He’s spent most of his career dispatching creeps who get off on terrorizing the vulnerable. Unlicensed, and unrestricted, he plays dirty.... But this case is unusual. Why so many men? Why this one girl? Does Nicki have something to hide? Or do her parents? Trawling the darkest depths of southern Florida, Lancaster faces a growing tide of secrets and deception. And the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that finding the truth won’t be easy. Because there’s more to this case than meets the eye.
©2018 James Swain (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Bad News Travels
Summary
Family secrets become a blackmailer's deadly weapon in this pulse-pounding thriller by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of No Good Deed. The shocking suicide of Beth Daniels' father - a prominent surgeon - has thrown the FBI agent into a tailspin. But when Beth heads to Saint Augustine, Florida, for the funeral, she'll need more than the emotional support of her boyfriend, retired detective Jon Lancaster. She'll need his gut instinct for solving a mystery. No sooner do they arrive than suspicions are aroused. There's the pair of Russians who seem to be watching every move the family makes. A final, cryptic phone call Martin Daniels made to his granddaughter. Strange blood evidence on his estate. More than $1 million missing from Martin’s account. And his cell phone, wiped clean, along with clues to a double life. To Beth, it's disturbingly clear: the man she loved was a stranger. As she and Jon delve into Martin's past, they have no idea where the secrets will take them. Or how dangerous it will be to expose the conspiracies, the cover-ups, and the terrible truths of Martin's life - and death.
©2020 James Swain (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.