Leo Denison is tired of scratching out a living. After making off with a quarter million dollars from a local Las Vegas casino, the software engineer is ready to leave the country and start over in style. He's not fully prepared, though, for what happens next when a group of feisty seniors take umbrage at his brazen theft and take matters into their own hands to see justice done. Meanwhile, a struggling musician moves to the big city searching for the meaning to life.
Carl Hiaasen has been quoted as stating that his stories are populated with slightly altered true tales from Florida since truth is indeed stranger than fiction. In that vein, Dead Money is a 17,000-word humorous take on several real-life events that were widely reported on during the wild, free-wheeling, anything goes ’90s decade in Sin City where the author once lived.
As in the story that follows, a casino’s bingo software was discovered as being manipulated. Though in real life the accused died soon after the story broke — his death reported as suicide. Jacob isn’t a specific person, but rather an amalgam of various people who flocked to the desert during this period of time seeking a life do-over. The Bingo Ladies are a product of the author’s overactive imagination — fractured memories of real-life neighborhood mothers working hard to provide their offspring with a better life. Names and dates of this tale have been altered for obvious reasons.
Taking a hard look at current events, it’s oddly amusing how Las Vegas almost twenty years ago now seems like 'the good old days.' Maybe decadence is relative.
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