Why You'll Love This
A Vegas con man who's robbed every casino in town just ran out of room to maneuver — and the people closing in aren't hotel security.
- Great if you want: slick heist fiction with a charming, morally flexible protagonist
- The experience: fast, propulsive, and fun — built for reading in one greedy sitting
- The writing: Swain keeps the grift mechanics sharp without slowing the momentum
- Skip if: you expect deep character interiority — this is pure plot velocity
About This Book
Las Vegas has seen every kind of gambler, but Billy Cunningham isn't playing with cards or chips—he's playing with identities, timing, and the colossal nerve it takes to con an entire city. In Bad Action, the second Billy Cunningham novel, James Swain drops his charming antihero into his most elaborate scheme yet, one that requires his crew to live as high rollers for a week without cracking under pressure. The problem is that pressure arrives fast and from every direction: contract killers with a bounty on Billy's head, and a woman from his past who has her own score to settle. The stakes are personal and mortal in equal measure.
What makes this novel such a satisfying read is Swain's command of pace and atmosphere. He understands Las Vegas the way a pickpocket understands a crowd—every glittering distraction is also a trap—and he uses that knowledge to keep readers perpetually off-balance alongside his characters. The dialogue crackles, the cons are clever enough to feel genuinely surprising, and Billy himself is the rare protagonist you root for precisely because you know you probably shouldn't.
