SIN CITY:A BILLY CUNNINGHAM NOVEL

JAMES SWAIN

To nobody's surprise, Sin City's hugely talented veteran writer, James Swain, has done it again. No other author writes about Las Vegas with the panache and the reality he brings to his newest novel. Instead of focusing on the glamour and glitter that we all know in love, Sin City focuses on the underbelly, the sex workers, the drug dealers, the hustlers, cops, and the thieves who make up a substantial portion of the Las Vegas population.

This time, Billy Cunningham, a recurring character in Swain's previous novels, appears in Reno. Before long, circumstances ensure that he meets and assists an FBI agent in arresting dangerous felons in a crime gone wrong. After a continued conversation with the FBI agent, Cunningham decides that the agent would be a perfect fit for his crew of casino cheats. What happens in the following 220 pages is perfectly played out. There is enough action, double-crosses, crooked cops, and legitimate dialogue to satisfy anybody's wishes for a superbly entertaining novel about Las Vegas and the casinos that seduce us to spend hard-earned money with a smile instead of a gun.