Illicit Glamour: The Last Good Time by Jonathan Van Meter

When gambling was legalized in Atlantic City New Jersey in the late 1970s, hotels that had fallen on bad times were hastily covered over with mirrors on the walls and carpeting on the floors -- but they were still seedy low class buildings. That comparison epitomizes the book's recurring theme that, long before there were professional image makers, there were men who knew that the sensation they projected in hand-made Italian suits, a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and the best table at the dinner club covered a multitude of sins, if not crimes.

Such a man was Paul Skinny D'Amato, owner of the 500 Club and reputed matchmaker, promoter, and friend of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. The book is a Rat Pack groupie's ultimate fan magazine. There is no subtlety in discovering any six degrees of separation, as the book names names, especially in connecting the Mob to the election of JFK and the death of Monroe. Parts of the story takes place outside of New Jersey, but Atlantic City certainly is portrayed the incubator of a lot of those headlines with D'Amato often being the behind the scenes expediter.

Like Mezrich in Bringing Down the House, Van Meter wants a reflected, vicarious part in the Rat Pack and D'Amato's action. There is no distance between him and his subject: no humor like in Charlatan, no erudite history like in Sin in the Second City. Just envy. But like Brinkley in Charlatan, D'Amato created his own place, molding Atlantic City into his schizophrenic vision: a mecca for high rollers and a vacation spot for the average man to lose his money gambling.

D'Amato and Atlantic City are intrinsically bound together and Van Meter does a good job in showing it as next to impossible to separate the two. In addition, he shows that the people in this community knew and loved Skinny, even it if was only his persona or for what profits he brought to their town. Much more troubling is the account of how the place he created came back to destroy his family and friends. Everyone seems tarnished: people with sullied reputations have them confirmed; others with a vestige of respectability come across as manipulated.

I have admitted in my reviews that I have never been drawn either to Las Vegas or Atlantic City. By going there, in books rather than in person, I now realize that it is their blatant promotion of vice and the purposeful attraction of people with addictions that I find most unattractive. Panderers can never be as tragic as sinners.