Taking Chances — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Detective’s Deadpan Delivery

The opening story, 'This Wiretapper Was Color-Blind,' is narrated by a detective who recounts his pursuit of a check-forger in New Orleans. The detective’s voice is flat and matter-of-fact, even when describing the criminal’s $15,000 mistake: a color-blind wiretapper who misread a signal. The humor lies in the gap between the high stakes and the mundane cause of failure. The narrative then veers into a long anecdote about a law firm’s junior partner, his wife, and a misunderstood telegram. The senior partner’s internal monologue—'it’s a devil of a mess all around'—reveals the story’s true subject: the comedy of miscommunication, not gambling. The pacing slows as the wife and her mother arrive, and the dialogue becomes stilted, mimicking the tension of a farce.

Poker as a Language of Its Own

The table of contents lists titles like 'Story of a Famous Pat Hand' and 'The Uncertain Game of Stud Poker,' suggesting that poker is not just a game but a source of narrative structure. In the excerpts, characters speak in a specialized lexicon: 'coppered his wife’s hunches,' 'running ringers,' 'cold feet.' This jargon creates an insider tone, but the stories often undercut the expertise of the speakers. The narrator of the introductory note observes that 'poker-players are addicted to persiflage,' hinting that the tales may be tall. The language is peppered with period slang—'blown-in-the-bottle pokerist,' 'dyed-in-the-wool'—which gives the collection a specific historical flavor. The rhythm of the prose shifts between rapid-fire dialogue and longer, more reflective passages, as when the senior partner 'twiddled his thumbs' in silence.

Shifts in Pace and Perspective

The excerpts show a deliberate variation in narrative speed. The detective’s opening is clipped and action-oriented: 'I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago.' But the story soon bogs down in the law office, where the senior partner’s thoughts are rendered in long, meandering sentences: 'There’ll be all kinds of a bobbery around here this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter proves to be something that Barlock wouldn’t want his wife to know about—and I’ve no doubt now that it will prove just that way, the young idiot!—why, he’ll be sulky with me.' This shift from terse to expansive mimics the way a gambler’s luck can change suddenly. The collection likely alternates between fast-paced turf tales and slower, more intricate poker stories, each with its own tempo. The reader should attend to these changes in rhythm, as they signal shifts in tone from comic to tense.

These stories reward attention to voice: the narrators are often unreliable or self-interested, and the humor depends on what they leave unsaid. The language is dense with period slang, but the emotional core is the universal experience of misreading a situation—whether a horse’s odds or a spouse’s mood. Readers may find that the most revealing moments occur in the pauses between the action, where characters reflect on their own folly.

I finished that collection and kept thinking about how chance always lingers after the hand is played, the race run. It reminded me, oddly, of an old paperback of Autumnal leaves — both feel like quiet rooms where people wait for luck to turn. That same hushed wondering about fate, maybe. Autumnal leaves: tales and sketches in prose and rhyme — Themes and Context stayed with me that way, like a folded note you find again. Some stories just do that.