James Pethel

Among Dieppe’s race-week gamblers—men swollen, women frighteningly thin—James Pethel looks almost unnervingly ordinary. Then the quiet, pink-cheeked man wins a fortune and keeps the bank open.

One August evening in Dieppe, an observant narrator wanders into the baccarat room he usually avoids, repelled by its seasoned gamblers and their excesses. Pethel catches his eye for being the one man who seems built for a long, uneventful life—even as money piles up before him. A chance introduction reveals a millionaire with a taste for risk, a sporting past, and a reputation for luck that seems to follow him everywhere. The narrator, who has resources of a very different kind, finds himself drawn into Pethel’s orbit. But what lies behind the gambler’s enviable calm—and can luck really be trusted?

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