Playing card as these 52 cards, commercial packs often include between one and six jokers, most often two. Decks with less than 52 cards are known as stripped decks. The piquet pack has all values from 2 through 6 in each suit removed for a total of 32 cards. It is popular in France, the Low Countries, Central Europe and Russia and is used to play piquet, belote, bezique and skat. It is also used in the Sri Lankan, whist-based game known as "omi". Forty-card French suited packs are common in northwest Italy; these remove the 8s through 10s like Latin suited
The Curse of the Bronze Lamp The Curse of the Bronze Lamp The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (also published as "Lord of the Sorcerers") is a mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr (1906–1977), who published it under the name of Carter Dickson. It is a locked room mystery or, more properly, a subset of that category known as an "impossible crime", and features the series detective Sir Henry Merrivale. Carr considered this one of his best impossible crime novels. Lady Helen Loring doesn't believe in the ancient Egyptian curse associated with an ancient artifact, a bronze lamp that is a gift from