Billy Phelan, small-time bookie, pool hustler, and poker player becomes an unlikely go-between in the 1938 kidnapping of an Albany political boss's son.
The second novel in William Kennedy's much-loved Albany cycle depicts Billy Phelan, a slightly tarnished poker player, pool hustler, and small-time bookie. A resourceful man full of Irish pluck, Billy works the fringes of the Albany sporting life with his own particular style and private code of honor, until he finds himself in the dangerous position of potential go-between in the kidnapping of a political boss's son.
“Kennedy displays a truly impressive ability to write on a level with his characters, to share the way in which Billy, a gambler on the margins, thinks and moves.”
– Thomas Flanagan,
The New York Review of Books
