Book description
Bryce
Courtenay's new - and final - also available as an eBook.
Set across three continents, Jack of Diamonds is a spellbinding story
of chance, music, corruption and love. During the Great Depression
there was little hope for a boy born into the slums of Cabbagetown,
Toronto. But Jack Spayd is offered a ticket out in the form of a Hohner
harmonica, won by his brutal drunken father in a late-night card game.
Jack makes music as a way of escaping his surroundings, and his talent
leads him to a jazz club and, eventually, to the jazz piano. Jack is a
virtuoso and hits the road, enchanting audiences in Canada, wartime
Europe and Las Vegas, where he is caught up in the world of elite poker
and falls under the spell of his boss, the enigmatic Bridgett Fuller.
Vegas is a hard town ruled by the Mafia, but Jack prospers, until his
luck turns bad and he falls foul of the Mob. Forced to run for his life
from Vegas, he must also leave the woman he adores. His adventuring
takes him to the far reaches of Africa, to a rare and valuable bird that
may seal his fate - and to the love of a very different woman. Bryce
Courtenay writes in a moving Epilogue that Jack of Diamonds will be his
last novel. If poker was an addiction then music was an overwhelming
obsession; one could never replace the other in my life.
