Smoketown is a dead-end street in downtown Las Vegas with a mysterious plume of probably-toxic smoke rising from a grate in the pavement, but it doesn't bother any of the assorted misfits, grinders, unemployed individuals, bookies, and ex-military who play in the Tuesday afternoon poker game at the nearby Boca bar.When Detective Harry Carn isn't playing, he's busy investigating the kidnapping of three of the world's greatest poker players from the final table of a glitzy Las Vegas poker tournament. Harry's world involves the players, the casino owner, the bumbling kidnappers, Harry's ex-fiancé', his running partner Eddie, his bullet-headed weightlifter friend Curly, two imported hit-men, the ex-wife who tossed him out, her mad-as-a-hatter best friend, her boyfriend who sells flame-throwers without a permit, and a serial-killer making his way across America by car with an innocent young girl hitch-hiker he picked up along the way.