Rats of Las Vegas
by Bodog Poker | Jan 6 2010
These days one doesn't have to look very far to find an image of poker. The game is so popular that the mainstream media is using the game on a daily basis to sell just about everything imaginable.
Poker game shows and reality shows are popping up on television and poker books are selling like crazy. Some authors are using the game as a setting for fiction novels, and the newest one that's getting very good reviews is Lisa Basold's Rats of Las Vegas. The story is about a young female poker prodigy named Millar Lacouvy, who starts
playing poker in small games in her native town of 1930's Vancouver, only to eventually find herself in the biggest games against the best players in the world in the Bugsy era
Las Vegas.
The novel is a story of a strong woman who manages to hold her own both on the felt and in her relationships with the men and women in her life. She gets murmurs of advice from the cards she's holding and she eventually learns to listen to them. One can easily make the argument that this is a metaphor for trusting one's instincts in life, and the allegory works well with the game of poker. As in many other aspects of life, the game of poker requires that we trust our read of a situation, and to make a tough decision without absolute knowledge of where we may stand at the time. The novel is also full of tidbits on how life is short and to live it hard while it's possible. It also touches on how living without fear of the outcomes of our decisions is essential to advancement to the next level.
Basold does a good job of keeping the read easy without too much flowery description of the settings. The pace of the book picks up when she has early success and then again when she raises her game to a new level. Pasold also deals with Lacouvy's failures without too much drama, and doesn't try to tear the reader's heart out as Lacouvy learns her life lessons along her journey. The reader can be inspired by her fight and can revel in her successes, while at the same time understand that being powerfully independent may not be the best thing to be all the time.
The book has lots of
poker references in it but it's not a book about poker. It is a window into a world of high stakes gambling and all the "rats" that one can meet along the way. It's Basold's first novel of her career and looks like it's going to be a big hit. She also published two books of poetry before the novel was produced.
