I'm nervous about gambling and I've never put on a bet in a casino. However, I have visited a couple of casinos in the company of my good friend Doug Stewart (seen above a few years back, when he and I travelled around Arizona together). Given the subject matter of his latest novel, I asked if he'd be willing to contribute a guest blog about casinos. Here's what he came up with:
'Just the city’s name conjures up exciting images for many and abhorrence for others. I lived there for seven exciting years. Ironically, when I started writing my international thriller Deadline Vegas I had no idea I would ever live there. Now I live on the Isle of Man – rather different from the neon, glitter and noise of The Strip.
On 18th November, Deadly Descent, the follow-up to Deadline Vegas is being released. This is my 18th book. The main character is Finlay “Dex” Dexter. In Deadline Vegas, following a vow made to his murdered sister to destroy a Las Vegas casino after she was cheated big-time, Dex is thrown into the middle of a massive international fraud where only murder can suppress the truth. The fall-out from the havoc he created in Sin City is carried over to Deadly Descent.
Deadly Descent, although starting with dramatic action in Africa, takes Dex from his London home to France and Istanbul and … to Las Vegas where some people have neither forgiven nor forgotten. The theme involves an unexplained helicopter crash. Eerily, fiction follows truth and truth follows fiction. You can pre-order now on Amazon UK and USA.
'Do Casinos cheat?' This is one of the most frequent questions I get asked. The short answer is that today, in most countries, casinos are heavily regulated to prevent cheating. However, gamblers do get duped when playing in poorly regulated countries.
After Bugsy Siegal created the Flamingo in the late 1940s, organised crime had a substantial grip on Vegas casinos. It was only in the 1980s that the Mafia were cleared out. Certainly, in the early days, there was cheating. One of my oldest friends worked in a Downtown Vegas casino where he was briefed on how the roulette was fixed.
One of his jobs was also to play a fruit machine specially selected by management. This was always close to an entrance. It was primed to pay out frequently. In those days, the noise of clattering money, bells and whistles encouraged hopefuls to come in and use the other machines around him. Strangely enough, they were usually cleaned out. Those machines were set out at a very low pay-out level!
Online gambling, again, is okay when the virtual casino is operating from well-regulated centres like the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, the UK or Malta etc. However, playing casino games operating from fringe countries is a risk I would not take. It is very easy for games to be rigged or to be hard to get your winnings paid out - if you are able to win!
In online poker, the danger can be that two or three of the players may be in league with each other against you as the mug punter. Beware!'
You can find out more about Doug and his crime and adventure thrillers at: https://www.douglasstewartbooks.com/
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