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The Honest Dealer
Vintage Signet #707.
144 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
About the author
Frank Gruber
158 books19 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Frank Gruber was an enormously prolific author of pulp fiction. A stalwart contributor to Black Mask magazine, he also wrote novels, producing as many as four a year during the 1940s. His best-known character was Oliver Quade, “the Human Encyclopedia,” whose adventures were collected in Brass Knuckles (1966), and will soon be republished in ebook format as Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,featuring brand-new material, from MysteriousPress.com, Open Road Integrated Media, and Black Mask magazine.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Frank Gruber was an enormously prolific author of pulp fiction. A stalwart contributor to Black Mask magazine, he also wrote novels, producing as many as four a year during the 1940s. His best-known character was Oliver Quade, “the Human Encyclopedia,” whose adventures were collected in Brass Knuckles (1966), and will soon be republished in ebook format as Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,featuring brand-new material, from MysteriousPress.com, Open Road Integrated Media, and Black Mask magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 17, 2026
The tag team of Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg are on a drive-about in Death Valley when they encounter a bloody man dying of a bullet wound who, before he dies, asks them to take a pack of cards and a chip to Nick in Las Vegas.
Fletcher and Craig are a comical pair, broke, with no prospects, and taking life one second at a time. From nothing, they reel in an $1800 stake. ‘Gambling is like that. You can roll the dice all evening and not make a single pass; you can lose twenty straight blackjack hands or feed a roulette wheel for two hours without winning a bet. You can sit in a gin rummy game and be triple-blitzed six times in a row. You can bet all the favorites at the track and all run out of the money.
And then comes a time when you can’t lose. You put a quarter into a slot machine and hit the jackpot. You make eighteen straight passes with the galloping dominoes. Percentages have nothing to do with it. In the long run they’ll beat you, but for that one glorious period, which may last a day, a week or even a month, you cannot lose a bet.” (pp. 40-41.)
Their pals in their new town include plainclothes officer Catch ‘Em Alive Mulligan, Nick the dealer, and Jane the almost-divorced hitchhiker, and the dead guy reappears too.
Fletcher and Craig are a comical pair, broke, with no prospects, and taking life one second at a time. From nothing, they reel in an $1800 stake. ‘Gambling is like that. You can roll the dice all evening and not make a single pass; you can lose twenty straight blackjack hands or feed a roulette wheel for two hours without winning a bet. You can sit in a gin rummy game and be triple-blitzed six times in a row. You can bet all the favorites at the track and all run out of the money.
And then comes a time when you can’t lose. You put a quarter into a slot machine and hit the jackpot. You make eighteen straight passes with the galloping dominoes. Percentages have nothing to do with it. In the long run they’ll beat you, but for that one glorious period, which may last a day, a week or even a month, you cannot lose a bet.” (pp. 40-41.)
Their pals in their new town include plainclothes officer Catch ‘Em Alive Mulligan, Nick the dealer, and Jane the almost-divorced hitchhiker, and the dead guy reappears too.
May 19, 2011
Johnny Fletcher and Sam Craig are driving through Death Valley when they find a man staggering along. Shot, he's dying and fishes a deck of cards and a chip from his pocket, urging them to send them to Nick in Vegas. All else on him is a pack of matches from a casino.hotel on the strip.
The pair head to Vegas, broke, planning to set up their little con game with the body building books to raise a little capital. A friendly cop stops them, giving them a silver dollar to help.
Johnny has the streak of all time, running up about twenty thousand at craps and blackjack.
They look for Nick, finding about twenty with that name. The friendly cop keeps turning up, the dead man in Death Valley ends up in their hotel room. They meet a young woman living in Vegas long enough to get a divorce. Johnny gets grabbed by two hoods and taken out into the desert. They're not interested in his paltry twenty grand(no small pile in 1947 dollars).
Johnny, professional con man, is also somewhat of a detective. Sam and he are forever coming upon murder victims in this series of books, usually having to solve the crime to clear their names.
Fun, quick read.
The pair head to Vegas, broke, planning to set up their little con game with the body building books to raise a little capital. A friendly cop stops them, giving them a silver dollar to help.
Johnny has the streak of all time, running up about twenty thousand at craps and blackjack.
They look for Nick, finding about twenty with that name. The friendly cop keeps turning up, the dead man in Death Valley ends up in their hotel room. They meet a young woman living in Vegas long enough to get a divorce. Johnny gets grabbed by two hoods and taken out into the desert. They're not interested in his paltry twenty grand(no small pile in 1947 dollars).
Johnny, professional con man, is also somewhat of a detective. Sam and he are forever coming upon murder victims in this series of books, usually having to solve the crime to clear their names.
Fun, quick read.
August 3, 2013
I read this book as it was listed in Bright Light City: Las Vegas in Popular Culture and I wanted a real cheap read. Mission accomplished. This is an old dime novel and it's pretty basic but fun. I like the bits about Las Vegas and it's pure dialogue with every character introduced being either good or evil and involved in a murder. Hooray.
April 20, 2013
Frank Gruber is my favorite pulp writer of the 30s, 40s & 50s.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews