S7E5 A Forced Card

Mysteries to Die For

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.

I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. These are arrangements, which means instead of word-for-word readings, you get a performance meant to be heard. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.

This is Season 7, Games People Play. Games are about competition conducted according to rules with participants working toward a goal. Games are a part of every culture and are one of the oldest forms of social interaction and engagement. Games can be fun, challenging and exhilarating. They can also be intense, cutthroat, and lethal. This season, our authors have fashioned deadly games and unscrupulous villains to test your detection skills.

This is Episode 5, Indian Poker or Blind Man’s Bluff is the featured game. This is A Forced Card by Ed Teja

If you like a taste of the surreal with your mysteries, check out the struggle that private investigator Matt Cramer faces. He is solving crimes in rural Silver City, New Mexico, where doing almost anything involves dealing with the magic of local witches and at least one shaman, the secrets of ranchers and desert rats, small town politics and law enforcement, and the possible involvement of aliens (and definitely some alien hunters). It’s a strange brew that tends to twist reality or expose the surreal, with more stories coming. Link to the first book, An Impossible Abduction, is in the show notes.

The series starts here: https://books2read.com/u/4ElRGO

ABOUT Indian Poker

This poker game has a lot of names. Indian poker, squaw poker, Oklahoma forehead, Indian head. According to my favorite source, Wikipedia, this is a game of probability and psychology. Ed described how we game is played so, yeah, you can see there being psychology involved. This is a one card poker game but variations exist on stud poker and Texas hold’em. I wasn’t able to find any details on the history of this game. It was difficult given how many names it has and the multiple meaning of words in the name. The tag game, blind man’s bluff, dates back to the late 15th century. And poker has existed in India since the British brought it in the 1800s. Fascinating facts that have nothing to do with today’s game. Ah well.

ABOUT Ed Teja

www.edteja.com

Ed Teja has edited magazines in Asia, been a boat bum in the Caribbean, traveled the world, and always, always, written fiction. He is currently hunkered down in rural New Mexico where he writes strange stories of strange people and teaches martial arts. His cross-genre stories emphasize the surreal around us and have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.

WRAP UP

That wraps this episode of Mysteries to Die For. Support our show by subscribing, telling a mystery lover about us, and giving us a five-star review. Check out our website TGWolff.com/Podcast for links to this season’s authors.

Mysteries to Die For is hosted by TG Wolff and Jack Wolff. A Forced Card was written by Ed Teja. Music and production are by Jack Wolff. Episode art is by TG Wolff. Join us next week for a Toe Tag, which is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, or thriller genre. Then come back in two weeks for our next original story, A Checkered Past by Frank Zafiro where checkers is the featured game