Bluff by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

Cloth; Remainder. Bluff by Jane Stanton Hitchcock. Mystery/Thriller. 

"Best known for her mystery novels, Jane is also an avid poker player who regularly competes in the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker. Her sixth novel, BLUFF, to be published in January 2019, pays tribute to her passion for poker, focusing on how the game helps her heroine seek revenge against the man who swindled her family out of a fortune. (Jane herself stars in an episode of American Greed which shows how she was the first to alert authorities to the larceny of the celebrity accountant, Kenneth Ira Starr. Starr’s clients, many of whom were originally introduced to him by Jane’s mother and stepfather, Arthur Stanton, included Mike Nichols, Lauren Bacall, Neil Simon, and Bunny Mellon.)

Jane started her career writing screenplays. Our Time deals with the death of a prep school girl from an illegal abortion. Her other plays include Grace, The Custom of the Country (an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s great novel, produced at The Mount and then off-Broadway), and Vanilla, directed by Harold Pinter (starring Joanna Lumley and opened at the Lyric Theatre in London’s West End in 1990).

In 1992, Signet/Penguin published Jane’s first novel Trick of the Eye. The book was nominated in the "Best First Novel" category for both the Hammett Prize and the Edgar Award. Her next book, The Witches' Hammer, a controversial thriller dealing with the occult and the misogyny of a centuries old law book dedicated to witch hunting within the Catholic Church, was published in 1994. Her third novel, Social Crimes, a New York Times bestseller, introduced Jo Slater, a New York socialite who commits murder. When the book was published the fun guessing game at many New York dinner parties quickly became which characters were based on which socialites and their friends. In June 2005, Hitchcock published the sequel to Social Crimes, One Dangerous Lady, also a New York Times bestseller. In June 2009, Hitchcock published Mortal Friends, her first mystery set in Washington, DC, which Bob Woodward described as “a dazzling, wicked murder mystery that unmasks most of Washington, which may never be the same.”

Jane Stanton Hitchcock attended The Brearley School, The Mary C. Wheeler School, and Sarah Lawrence College. She worked for Mike Nichols on The Apple Tree, and was an assistant to Andre Previn when he was the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Jane was a close friend of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She was honored to read Psalm 23 at the former First Lady's funeral in 1994.

Jane’s mother, actress Joan Alexander, originated the roles of Lois Lane on the radio serial The Adventures of Superman and Della Street on the radio serial Perry Mason. Joan had her own television show, The Name’s the Same, and starred as a leading lady on Broadway in Witness for the Prosecution and Poor Richard. Jane’s stepfather, Arthur Stanton brought Volkswagen to America in the early 1950s."