Lost In Las Vegas Book Review

In his loft office overlooking the recently renovated sales floor of the Gamblers Book Club in Las Vegas, owner-publisher-author Avery Cardoza is on a conference call with Kevin Pollak in Beverly Hills discussing major studio proposals for taking Avery’s (he’s always on a first-name basis) new novel, Lost in Las Vegas, to the big screen. He’ll leave the office at noon to pick up his twin two-year-old sons from nursery school. Then it’s back to business till dinnertime, when he’ll tuck them into bed and spend a restless night working at the computer and tending to diaper changing.

In the GBC’s recording studio/seminar center next door, a sound technician is readying the system to record one of the hundreds of gaming books published by Cardoza Publishing, while the company’s manager is negotiating the conversion of the Cardoza catalog to E-book format.

Avery’s a busy guy, has been ever since every casino in Nevada banned him for card counting at blackjack 30 years ago when he was just 24 years old. With his gambling income decimated by the eye-in-the-sky and the suits looking over his shoulder, he decided to try something new. So, with no experience in the tough-as-nails world of publishing, he left the equally tough world of blackjack to write and self-publish an easy-to-read book on how to beat the casino, followed by writing 20 more books, including Winning Casino Blackjack for the Non-Counter. Chalk one up for the “little” guys! Today Cardoza Publishing is the world’s largest publisher of gaming books and home to a who’s who of authors, including enough poker authors to fill the final three tables at the World Series of Poker.

Originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., Avery moved from the Big Apple to Sin City in 2008, soon after his acclaimed men’s lifestyle magazine, Avery Cardoza’s Player, succumbed to the economic vagaries of the magazine biz after a 5-year run. As its editor-in-chief, he interviewed celebs such as Kim Kardashian and Don Cheadle, sports figures, and yes, famous poker players.

“I worked hard to make Player a quality magazine and enjoyed writing its ‘7 Deadly Sins’ signature feature,” he said. Not that he enjoys those sins himself—he doesn’t have the time or inclination. Neither is he a gambler per se, though he regularly plays in the World Series of Poker and placed 10th in this year’s no-limit deuce-to-seven event.

His most recent project was rescuing the Gamblers Book Club, a Las Vegas icon since 1964, from economic extinction, first by moving it to its new digs on Eastern Avenue in Vegas and then by expanding its catalog to more than 3,000 gaming titles and modernizing its huge website. He’s also bringing Cardoza Publishing into the 21st century: “With the print-oriented book business on the brink of extinction,” the always casually dressed (think rumpled tee-shirt, shorts and sneakers) entrepreneur said, “we’re doing everything we can to update our catalog to readily accessible formats with competitive price points.”

Always dialed in and running fast forward, in a departure from writing how-to-win books, Avery has just published his first novel, Lost in Las Vegas, which took him a decade to finish. It was not a blissful experience:

“What I went through to get this novel written, you cannot imagine. It was a nightmare, the worst experience of my life. It was a miserable, horrible, god-awful torture. Ironically, it’s a comedy/thriller. I went through stretches as long as 40 hours straight working on the book, with breaks only for the bathroom. No sleep, no food, just a trudge through hell. It was not a book I planned to write, nor did I ever consider writing a comedy, especially coming out of the ashes of a very dark period in my life. Suffering through this work, I had one theme pounding in my head day and night: I don’t ever want to have to go through this again!”

Not quite a sterling affirmation of the joys of writing, ya think?

The result of his gut-wrenching struggle is an offbeat, dark comedy/thriller that follows two naïve dudes, John and sidekick Ludo, on a weekend vacation from their gray lives in Brooklyn. As they spiral downward into the underbelly of Sin City, they become ensnared in a dangerous web of intrigue filled with gangsters, gamblers, wackos, the FBI, and of course, a gorgeous gal with irresistible wiles. And did I mention the poker game with a ring of rounders?

Lost in Lost Vegas is a fast-paced, LOL funny romp that capitalizes on the sequins and sins of its setting and enmeshes its heroes in myriad misadventures with more twists and turns than a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. Avery purposely omits overloading us with penetrating insights into the characters’ motives or sappy glimpses into their dysfunctional pasts, preferring to keep the plot careening forward at full throttle.

With all the stuff that great buddy flicks like The Hangover are made of, Lost in Las Vegas is way too cool a book not to find its way to the big screen. Chalk up another one for the “little” guys!

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