Bluff

A woman walks into a restaurant, has the maître d' direct her to a table of A-list business gentleman, she pulls a gun out of her purse, doesn't eat, but she shoots, and leaves. She's two-thirds of the story of the panda in Lynne Truss's book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

No spoilers will be given, but if you read the blurb on the back of Jane Stanton Hitchcock's last novel, "Bluff" you'll know the whole plot. And if you've read her obituary on her very recent passing, you'll know which parts of the book are part of Ms. Hitchcock's real life.

I became intrigued by the book by the obituary. After all, it won a Dashiell Hammett prize in 2019, so how bad can it see?

The cover is stylish. A rich woman wearing a rich looking hat, under a bit of dripping blood. The editors have spent money on Ms. Hitchcock's books because, well, they sell. The paperback book is 305 pages, in somewhat a large font, generously spaced lines, and many, many short chapters. There are 56 chapters. I think the editors missed this one. Since Ms. Hitchcock is a poker player, and Maud is a poker player, then there should have been 52 chapters. Oh well. No big deal.

Somewhat late in Ms. Hitchcok's life she became hooked on playing poker. She started, probably like many, with online poker, Texas hold 'em. She graduated to tournaments, and with some encouragement from Lara Eisenberg, a poker buddy who in 2021 won the World Series of Poker Ladies Championship (there is a thing for everything) With her, Ms. Hitchcock honed her bluffing skills, which were enhanced by being a 56 year-old woman who when she sat down at the table the men's eyes went "ka-ching." But she was always underestimated, and won some significant change.

Maud is an older woman who has many nights of experience playing alongside people whose real names are on rap sheets, are likely carrying weapons and did time for transgressions, in an illegal, high stakes game at "Gypsy's" in Washington, D.C. In a bad neighborhood.

Maud's mother was an actress, Lois. Ms. Hitchcock's mother was an a actress, Joan. Maud's mother was fleeced by a celebrity accountant Burt Sklar. Ms. Hitchcock's mother was rendered penniless by a celerity accountant named Kenneth Starr (not the independent counsel investigating Bill Clinton). Kenneth Starr fleeced many A-list celebrities out of their money.

Ms. Hitchcock at Starr's sentencing

In real life, there are no murders in Ms. Hitchcock's life. But there is comeuppance when she works diligently to get indictments against Kenneth Starr, who is later convicted of fraud and is sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. He is now out, and is 84-years old.

The obit tells us that the prosecutors wanted a 12-year sentence but the judge felt sorry for Mr. Starr and gave him a shorter sentence because "his victims were well all off and that Mr. Starr had lost his moral compass because of his affection for the fourth wife, a former pole dancer." 

Paraphrase "The Merchant of Venice": If I am rich and you steal my money, are you not still a thief? Didn't work all the way, apparently.

There is a pole dance/stripper in "Bluff", a sweet, young, very attractive girl who isn't very sophisticated, but who wins  people over with sincerity.

The settings are mostly Manhattan, and all places that the wealthy prowl. Maud, now an older woman, and on the other side of beautiful, still knows how to look the part of wealth.

At the opening of the book she assembles herself carefully. She knows how to look when she goes to the Four Seasons on Park Avenue not to eat (The Four Seasons is no longer there.)

She decks herself out in an Yves St. Laurent, black wool suit; in her lapel is a decent copy of a Ventura pin (she hocked her real one); her shoes are secondhand black patent leather Louboutins, scuffed soles, bought at a thrift shop recently. (That's some thrift shop.) Her mirror tells her she now looks like a middle-aged lady of means, "with a conservative sense of style." She is sure to get past the maître d' with swagger. In her purse are the usual female items. The gun is not a usual item.

"Bluff" is not a whodoneit. We know whodoneit. Will Mad Maude get her revenge and somehow not pay for it?

Read the book.

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