"Investigative reporter Max Revere has cracked many cases, but the one investigation she's never attempted is the mystery from her own past. Her mother abandoned her when she was nine, sending her periodic postcards, but never returning to reclaim her daughter. Seven years after the postcards stop coming, Martha Revere is declared legally dead, with no sign of what may have happened to her. Until now. With a single clue -- that her mother's car disappeared...

Glen and Stan, the Odd Couple of scamdom, are back from their Big Get-Even adventure with another get-rich-quick-or-go-down-in-flames scheme. They stumble upon a lone scientist and his half-genius, half-addlepated invention, which seems to promise a big payoff if they can dupe the right buyers. But infidelity, gangsters, foreign governments, and their own greed offer stumbling blocks galore.

"In 1888 in Victoria, Texas, for a simple job, a Chicago private eye gets caught up in much darker affairs and ends up in the poker game to end all poker games"--