Gambling and Las Vegas seem to inspire more pulp than serious fiction and, admittedly, we don’t read much pulp. However, researching this answer, we wound up with two lists of titles that we haven’t read. The books on the long list have some potential for strict entertainment value, while those on the short list could have some literary potential (and you never know when a book from one list might cross over to the other). So we could revisit this answer in the future, based on new discoveries. Meanwhile, if anyone out there in QoDland has a favorite novel about gambling and Las Vegas, we’d appreciate hearing about it.
For now, though, we can only go with the ones we’ve read. Also note that the gambling novels here have nothing to do with mathematical accuracy (that list would be very short); these selections are based entirely on literary merit.
Perhaps the greatest gambling novel ever written is The Gambler, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, in 1866. The intrigue surrounding this novel is almost as good as the book itself: Dostoevsky, himself a compulsive gambler, bet his publisher that he could write it in one month. For doing so, he received an advance for Crime and Punishment; if he’d lost, he would have forfeited the copyrights to all his past and future work. The manuscript was dictated to a young stenographer who later became Dostoevsky's wife. The Gambler is a short (by Russian standards) and deeply psychological drama whose protagonist, Alexey Ivanovitch, is a tutor working for a Russian general. Most of the action occurs in Roulettenberg, a fictional town in Germany where Alexey develops a serious gambling addiction while falling in love with the general’s stepdaughter, the cruel and manipulative Polina. Highly recommended.
Another classic is Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (1953). This was the first of Fleming’s 12 James Bond novels, which takes place at a French casino where baccarat "expert" Bond is assigned the job of bankrupting an agent for SMERSH, the secret Soviet assassination bureau. Bond eventually beats the Russian agent (with a little help from the CIA), but eventually discovers that his beautiful assistant and lover, Vesper Lynd, is a Russian double agent.
A third keeper is Loser Takes All by Graham Greene (1955). Stranded in Monte Carlo, the husband of a newly wedded young couple devises a gambling system and wins so much money that he makes a devil’s deal with the bad guy, but loses his bride in the process. It all works out in the end when the husband loses his money to the bad guy, but gets his wife back.
Snake Eyes by Edwin Silberstang (1977) is a great one if you can get your hands on it (last time we looked, it was available at UNLV). It’s an old-Las Vegas story of a card counter, a chip hustler, a compulsive gambler, a cheating blackjack dealer, a hotel owner and his underworld backers, and a has-been household-name entertainer.
Last Call by Tim Powers (1992) is a strange, suspenseful, and violent tale in which chaos and randomness, the patron saints of Las Vegas, manifest from certain combinations of cards in poker hands. A particular poker game, called Assumption, is played once ever 21 years on a houseboat on Lake Mead, using the most contraband tarot deck in existence, by players unaware that the stakes are life and death.
A personal favorite is Dice Angel by Brian Rouff (2001). Rouff is a long-time local who has a solid grasp on Vegas and all its quirks and twists. The "dice angel" is a karma-spouting planet-charting colon-cleansing floozy who claims to be able to supply luck at the crap tables -- and the main character, Jimmy D, needs all the luck he can get.
Finally, God Doesn’t Shoot Craps by Richard Armstrong (2006) is the latest great gambling fiction. It’s the story of Danny Pellegrino, a junk-mail con man who sells fake gambling systems to gullible people. But then he discovers that his latest system, "Win by Losing" (based on a real game-theory concept called Parrondo’s Paradox) actually works, so he has to win his fortune before the whole world catches on. Unfortunately, a Mafia boss catches on first and Pellegrino has to escape his evil clutches.
Now for Las Vegas novels.
Perhaps the closest that Las Vegas fiction comes to a Great American Novel is The Lucky by H. Lee Barnes, a creative writing professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada. In this sprawling Western saga, based loosely on the story of the Binions, the main character, Peter Elkins, is adopted by Willy Bobbins, a ruthless Las Vegas casino owner in the 1950s. The plot spreads out from Glitter Gulch to the Bobbins’ Montana ranch to Vietnam and back again. It’s mostly dark, ultimately uplifting, and always powerful.
Ivory Coast by Charles Fleming (2002) is another masterful treatment of 1950s Las Vegas, as seen through the eyes of a jazz musician and heroin addict named Deke. The story revolves around opening night at the Ivory Coast, based loosely on the Moulin Rouge. The characters include the Coast’s business-savvy black owner, a racist Vegas sheriff, an underage truck stop waitress, and a courier from Chicago carrying a suitcase full of incriminating evidence. The ending goes off on one of the strangest tangents ever seen in a book about Vegas.
The Death of Frank Sinatra (1996) is by Michael Ventura, a well-known L.A. writer and one of the most astute modern commentators on the psychological and emotional significance of Las Vegas. Mike Rose is a private eye whose father was a Sicilian Mafia enforcer and whose mother -- well, you’ll have to read the book to find out about the mother. Anyway, Rose takes a case involving a twisted woman intent on murdering her husband and along the way, he finds that he has to pay off deadly debts incurred by his parents and shed a lot of blood in the process. It’s one of the most disturbing and intense novels we’ve ever read about anywhere, let alone Las Vegas.
Devil’s Hole by Bill Branon (1995) is the second novel by a local author who made it big with his first (originally self-published) novel Let Us Prey. A professional killer, Arthur Arthur only accepts contracts to hit people with a history of evil. He’s hired by a Las Vegas sports book to eliminate a wise guy with a wildly successful betting system, who reportedly sells drugs to children. Things get complicated when it turns out that Arthur and his target share a girlfriend. Rugged, bloody, and edgy.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson (1971) is the famous account of a trip taken by the master of gonzo journalism to Las Vegas, with his 300-pound Samoan attorney in tow, to cover the Mint 400 Desert Race for Sports Illustrated.. As such, it’s not fiction. But thanks to the drug-induced adventures -- and later writing -- it might as well be.
