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The George Kelley Collection
Adventure Stories
THE VENETIAN BLONDE
A.S. Fleischman
Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1963.
Bison Catalog Record
Meet Skelly, once the "smoothest talking, fastest dealing, honest dishonest card player in the business", but now reduced to the rumpled suit on his back and forty bucks in cash. Washed up as a card shark, Skelly is trying to stay one step ahead of the hired guns who are hot on his trail, and he drifts into sunny Venice, California. There he meets the beautiful but dangerous Maggie, an ex-dancer now operating as Evangeline Barlow, director of the Institute of Spirit Research. Desperate for some quick cash to pay off his gambling debts, Skelly agrees to join Maggie in an elaborate million dollar con game. Their plan is to convince a wealthy widow that her beloved dead nephew has returned from the grave, bilking her out of a cool half million in the process. Nothing proceeds according to plan however, and there are plenty of surprises in store for Skelly along the way, including the fact that the dead man isn't really dead at all, and psychic illusion cannot conceal the reality of cold-blooded murder.