Sometimes winning can be murder.

It all started in Richard Starkman’s office when he told me that someone was trying to murder him.  Who am I?  Yeah, I guess you’ve got to know that.  I’m Michael P. O’Handley, sometimes cab driver, sometimes Insurance Investigator, full time hustler; just trying to get by in this world.  Balding, paunchy and at fifty-something well past my best before date, I guess it’s hard to picture me involved in a case like this; but as Starkman said, what prompted him to call me was the fact that I was recommended as “stupidly honest.”

At first, I thought it was Starkman’s paranoia and no one was really trying to kill him.  Then I found out about the poker game where the ultimate winner is the one who survives the longest and now the pot stands at a cool quarter million.  Then there’s the unusual circumstances concerning how some players met their untimely ends, the suspicous advances of their beautiful but deceptive wives and the big Italian kid who wants to perform primitive surgery on a sensitive part of my anatomy because he thinks I’m sleeping with his mother...which is another story.  Am I going too fast for you?

Well, that’s just the beginning.  A dead man leaves me seventy-five grand if I find his murderer, the wives are willing to do anything to help and to top it off, my ex-wife is thinking about getting back together.  So, do I keep the money, find the murderer, survive the women and just who is the winner who takes all?

Okay...it’s too much to explain in this short space.  You’ll just have to read the book.

                                       Michael P. O’Handley