Poker often features in crime fiction, but usually as a sideshow. The home game that is interrupted by news of an unforeseen death, the walkthrough of a casino after police tape has already been tied up around a crime scene, or the internet history looked up after a serial killer has run amok.

Rarely, however, is the game of poker integral to the plot of a crime story.

That is, except perhaps, in the short story collection called Dead Man’s Hand, a 2008 compilation edited and compiled by Otto Penzler with an introduction from Howard ‘The Professor’ Lederer.

Don’t let that FTP-scandal-tasting stamp of approval put you off. The volume contains 15 stories from some of the world’s best crime writers, such as Alexander McCall Smith, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffery Deaver and Peter Robinson.