Murder in Vegas
New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation
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3.2 • 41 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In Murder in Vegas, the International Association of Crime Writers and New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly have gathered twenty-two crime and mystery stories about the ultimate playground and what can happen behind the glitz and glamour.
Las Vegas. Lost Wages. Sin City. An artificial oasis of pleasure, spectacle, and entertainment, the gambling capital of America has reinvented itself so many times that its doubtful that anyone knows for sure what's real and what isn't in the miles of neon and scorching heat. Las Vegas is considered the ultimate players destination--no matter what your game. Almost anything is available--for a price, mind you, and sometimes losers walk away from the tables with even less than just an empty wallet or purse--sometimes they don't walk away at all.
From a gambler who must-win at the roulette table to stay alive to a courier who's only mistake was accepting a package with Las Vegas as the final destination, come to the true city that never sleeps, where fortunes are made and lost every day, and where snake-eyes aren't found just on a pair of dice.
Murder in Vegas features stories by: James Swain, S.J. Rozan, Wendy Hornsby, Michael Collins, T.P Keating, J. Madison Davis, Sue Pike, Joan Richter, Libby Hellmann, Tom Savage, Edward Wellen, K.J.A. Wishnia, Linda Kerslake, John Wessel, Lise McClendon, Ronnie Klaskin, Ruth Cavin, A.B. Robbins , Gay Toltl Kinman, Micki Marz, Rick Mofina, Jeremiah Healy
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
High-profile and award-winning authors, coupled with an interesting concept, should lure many readers to the table, but some will find Connelly's anthology a mixed bag. Sin City is obviously an eminently suitable location for a variety of crime tales, but the 22 entries mostly fail to realize Las Vegas's potential. Jeremiah Healy, creator of John Francis Cuddy and past president of the professional group behind the volume (the International Association of Crime Writers), provides the high point with his grim, noirish "Grieving Las Vegas," whose pathetic characters would be familiar to Cornell Woolrich fans. The other engaging stories come from some lesser-known scribes, such as Joan Richter, whose cryptic "The Gambling Master of Shanghai" features the enigmatic Uncle Ho, a so-called "whale" with deep pockets interested in high-stakes gaming. Michael Collins's "The Kidnapping of Xuang Fei" does a nice job of portraying post-9/11 America, but a Vegas setting is not essential to the story. Otherwise, the assortment of gangsters, celebrity-obsessed stalkers and hard-luck cases fail to make much of an impression, suggesting that this book might not be the best bet for crime fiction fans. Agent, Martin H. Greenberg at Tekno Books.
Customer Reviews
Waste of time
Only one Michael Connolly short story. Others by unfamiliar authors. I was expecting a novel. Very disappointed
Not enough research/reality
Some of the stories were better than others, of course. But the ones that bugged me were the ones that just didn't get Las Vegas. If you're going to write about Vegas, there are some things you really should get right.
For one thing, 98 degrees in Vegas in the summer is exceptionally cool. 105 to 110 is the norm. If you're trying to make the point that it's hot - you'd have been much better off with reality. And prostitution is NOT legal in Vegas. It's not legal anywhere in Clark County. You've got to go to Nye County for that. Finally, you'll NEVER see slot machines in bathrooms because it's illegal to have cameras in bathrooms, and there are NO slot machines, anywhere, that don't have at least one camera on them.
The occasional really good story suffered for the company it was in. There were more mediocre tales here than good ones.