King of Diamonds

If this newest thriller featuring the enigmatic poker player and spiritual adept known as Preacher were a hand of five-card draw, it would be a royal flush, aces high. Thackrey ( Aces and Eights ) deals all the right cards in a fast-paced, streetwise story right out of the sordid headlines of the pk past two decades. He raises the ante by throwing in several mysterious characters whose loyalties cannot quite be trusted, along with a fiendishly clever psychopath who founds a satanic cult with a California casino as its temple. A generous helping of suspense, romance and adventure is interestingly spiked with Preacher's excursions into Eastern mysticism. And when Thackrey finally calls the cards, the result is a rip-snorting, stet/pk cinematic finale that races like a speeding train. The book's lastpk pages offer a graceful, low-key coda in which Thackrey subtly restores the moral order and suggests that personal integrity means something, even in a world gone mad with greed and brutality. (Nov.)