Playing on stereotypes galore -- that Nevada is Vegas; that MIT students are geeks; that Orientals are inscrutable -- BDTH reads like a movie script, major network, prime time, not HBO.
Both my son and a complete stranger in the library reading room interrupted me, noticing I was reading it, saying they saw the movie, and mentioning they heard the book was better. How awful was the movie?
Allegedly a true story, Mezrich was lured into documenting it by Kevin Lewis/Jeff Ma, a modern day Sheherazade, relating the most exciting, glamorous and dangerous 1,460 nights (between June '94 and June '98) ever imagined.
I've been in a casino once, Turning Stone, with a college roommate addicted to poker and cigars (this was before anti-smoking laws). It was Las Vegas without the bettors wearing bling, just fanny packs. Despite its mortar and bricks, it seemed like a stage scenery backdrop to the real "action" going on at the tables.
As the third book in my current mini-theme of sins and crime in America, BDTH breaks no new inroads to gambling or the houses' edge. Unlike the medical quacks in Kansas and the madam sisters in Illinois, the positioning of virtue versus vice is missing. The "good" MIT team of card counters see themselves as not doing anything legally wrong. (Let's hear it for adding ethics to the curriculum.) The "bad" casino floor managers, private investigators, and IRS auditors are not out to "get them" but are personally without motive -- just following the rules and procedures as rigidly as the plus one, minus one of the blackjackers.
If Mezrich was doing this conscientiously, he had made the book move as fast as a deck of cards in a game of 21 or as the jet flying to Nevada on Friday after school lets out. Places are described with the detail found on the front of a touristy post card. Characters, since they are math nerds, need not have conversations or meaningful relationships because they are anti-social and inept to begin with. What a gift to a writer -- no need for setting or dialogue, and a plot that could have been depicted using Wily Coyote and the Road Runner. At least there, we'd know that we were in the desert.
Mezrich wants to be one of the counters, not tell their story, and he alternates chapters with his present day (while writing) interviews of sources. This not only makes the structure and effort of writing too intrusive, it also makes him a narcissistic co-star with Kevin. You can see the last chapter coming, where Ben and Jeff are at a table with purple chips piling up in front of the author.
Thankfully, Pope never wanted to operate using goat parts nor Abbott seduce corporate executives. Be interesting to see how this story compares to New Jersey.
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