Ed Recommends: The Prop

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Since the poker boom started, a slew of poker-themed novels have come out, most poorly-received. A friend of mine recommended Drawing Deadby Pete Hautman, so I toddled off to the book store to find a copy of it. They didn’t have it, but they did have a few other novels by Hautman, and I decided to try The Prop.

The book features Peeky Kane, a 40-something prop player at an Indian casino. Right off the bat, she stumbles into a share of a crooked bad beat jackpot. Shortly thereafter, she covers for a sick fellow prop on her day off and finds herself witness to a daring robbery in the poker room. Peeky’s world has turned upside-down, and she spends the rest of the book trying mostly in vain to get things back to normal as events unfold around her.

The plot is fairly standard thriller fare. It moves quickly, and though not dazzling, I never felt it dragging. I most liked Hautman’s depiction of day-to-day cardroom life and culture. I suspect the book was written before the poker boom, as Peeky’s typical game ranges from $3-$6 to $15-$30 limit hold’em. She marvels at the one $5-$10 pot-limit game that goes occasionally that, according to her, plays as big as a $300-$600 limit game. A lot of the details about the room and its characters rang true to me as what the poker world was like before the WPT came on the scene.

Overall, I thought The Prop was an entertaining read, and any poker fan should enjoy it. Hautman has written a slew of poker novels, and I’ll definitely try some of his other ones.

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