'Gut Shot on the River' is a fictional crime thriller about Bobbie Swann, an ex-poker pro and casino security consultant, and his disabled brother who are kidnapped from their California farm by a local, brutal crime baron and forced to train a team of handpicked players to cheat in the lucrative World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. The antagonist is a greedy and sadistic Romanian, Dragomir Saad, who many years ago charmed an innocent Texan school teacher while on a cruise down the Danube. They married and moved to Texas, where his wife raised their son, Yorgi, while Dragomir made the family fortune in the drug trade from across the Mexican border. After amassing a small fortune, he relocated his family to California and bought a pistachio plantation and a small poker card room. His abject cruelty grew over time, however, to the point where his wife abandoned them both after a particularly violent fight. The action begins with Yorgi, by now his father's protegee in crime, returning from a stint in 'juvie' with his two equally sociopathic former high school friends. The trio soon becomes Dragomir's team of enforcers, leaving a trail of murder, mutilation and mayhem behind them as they do his bidding. As events unfold, the protagonist, Bobbie Swann, and his genius, wheelchair-bound brother, Jimmy, are swept up into Dragomir's latest scheme to train a team of crack poker players how to cheat through a collaborative system of signals. The siblings' parents have recently passed away, and they are forced to hire Gabriela, a caretaker for Jimmy. She is an intelligent, beautiful and feisty young woman who has a dark secret of her own. It isn't long before the brothers are vying for her attentions and worrying about her also becoming embroiled in the evil that pervades the Saad farmstead. The book might best be described as 'The Godfather' meets 'Rounders', incorporating the humor of poker room parlance with romance set on California's beautiful Central Coast and the intrigue that is fueled by the $60 million prize pool on offer at the most prestigious tournament in the world's fastest growing sport. The body count soon escalates, as avarice and treachery drive the plot's numerous twists and turns."