Novels No. 40 (LL358)

 

Chris Bohjalian. The Princess of Las Vegas. USA: Doubleday, 2024.

What a gig! Crissy Dowling was absolutely born to play Princess Diana in a Vegas casino. Her sentimental and very popular cabaret show outshines its slightly rundown Buckingham Palace (BP) Hotel venue. She's entirely content with her predictable life, with with a little help from pills and purging. But when the hotel owners ‒ the Morley brothers ‒ die suspiciously, Crissy has job anxiety along with manager Eddie and the rest of the staff. How much is Vegas controlled by forces such as Mastaba, the newest version of a criminal organization? Her good buddy Nigel, who plays Prince Charles in her show, is the only trusted voice she knows.

To further unsettle her easy life, her younger sister Betsy moves to Las Vegas—with twelve-year-old adopted daughter, the precocious Marisa—thanks to her lover Frankie who joins Futurium, a growing cryptocurrency operation. So often being told that the sisters look like twins makes both of them uneasy; their relationship is not close and often at loggerheads. And without explanation, Crissy has a deep grudge against Betsy for "killing their mother." Betsy questions whether Crissy's psyche has been totally subsumed by her royal obsession. Alarm bells ring for both women as Futurium intends to buy the BP from the deceased brothers' estate; Frankie's new associates frighten Betsy. They seem to be manipulating the two look-alikes in a mysterious, dangerous game. Young math-phenom, electronics-savvy Marisa is caught in the middle.

Financiers, gangsters, politicians: a scary mix. Layer by layer we are led into a shadowy intangible world few of us know, with bitcoin dealings and desperate extortionists. Like an untended pressure cooker, the plot is about to explode. Bohjalian seldom disappoints.

Crissy

▪ The Diana show grew from downtown party act to performance art to road show to Vegas nightclub eccentricity. (15)

▪ I could feel my resolve to build a Berlin Wall between my sister and me here in the desert starting to erode, the imbricated scales shedding one by one, and supposed part of it was a desire to meet my niece. (46)

▪ "You just told me your brother was murdered, and now you think someone wants to—what's the Vegas colloquialism?—whack you next," I admitted. (75)

▪ "You reveal more of yourself as Diana onstage than you do as Crissy Dowling offstage." (81)

▪ I didn't want to push him away. I had pushed away so many people in my life. (98)

▪ "We're doomed, Nigel," I said. "The Morleys are dead. Best case, the BP's fiscal plight was so dire they really did take their own lives." (175)

▪ "They had guns, Crissy. I was not getting in that car, and I was not letting you get in that car." (185)

▪ "Are you really going to put on your therapist hat and trot out that nonsense that I only do what I do because Diana had bulimia?" (246)

Betsy

▪ "I want you to come with me, Betsy. There's a place for you, too, with Futurium." (36)

▪ She was a twelve-year-old human being with enough emotional baggage to fill the hold of a passenger jet. (54)

▪ What would a fintech millionaire think of the downtrodden world where Crissy Dowling cast her spell? (57)

▪ "Frankie's old bank used to do business in Russia, South Korea, and Cambodia," Betsy said. (123)

▪ "Rory. His ... type. Dude can be a pussycat one minute and crazy as hell the next." (141)

▪ "Trust me, dye your hair, spend a few weeks with an accent coach, take some singing lessons, and you could be Diana, too." (158)

▪ "If our stepfather hadn't had the grace to fucking kill himself, I promise you, I would have done it for him!" (202)

▪ "I wish you wouldn't set fire to every olive branch I send your way." (246)

▪ "Things like that can be misconstrued," said Damon. "And guys like Tony Lombardo? They're probably reading your texts." (263)

Paul Theroux. The Bad Angel Brothers. USA: Mariner Books, 2022.

Frank Belanger is a piece of work. A lawyer by training, slyly aggressive by nature. Younger brother Pascal (Cal), a successful geologist, tries to steer clear of him as much as possible. Their surname gave rise to the childhood nickname that stuck forever: bad angel. According to Cal, whose descriptions of Frank are works of literary art, his older brother lives only to mentally torture him; the man hides his personal insecurities behind a superficial charm and measured insults. Fundamentally, the novel is the story of the two brothers' personal and professional growth as narrated by Cal; more deeply, it's a study of how much psychological damage one can inflict, or bear, up to a point of no return.

Nothing is too sacred for Frank's provocation. We learn that Cal once saved Frank from drowning, that Cal rescued him financially more than once. All to the tune of Frank's scorn, denial, and underhanded sabotage—with their mother, with Cal's wife Vita, with everyone they know in their small town. Cal, constantly parrying Frank's deliberate attempts to disparage him at uncomfortable lunches; Cal, who yearns ‒ and lives for ‒ his solitary, satisfying days of foreign mining exploration; Cal, who has fantasies of tormenting his brother in like fashion. Vita refuses to recognize Frank's skewed attitudes because she needs his legal guidance in her career. Frank appropriates Cal's travel adventures as told to Vita, making them his in the telling. Too sensitive and trying to be decent, Cal allows Frank's sick malignancy to predominate his consciousness. Just when Cal decides to stop travelling and spend quality family time at home, disasters upend his plans and Frank glibly seals the trap.

The novel is also rich in lore of the mining industry, its importance and its faults as practised in many landscapes. Theroux is absolutely wizard with words and language. In this case, the slow buildup to a crime is mesmerizing, his penetrating insight into fraternal personalities, amazing.

The brothers

▪ Family members have a special untranslatable language, of subtle gestures, finger play, winks and nods, little insults, odd allusions and needling words, that are devastating within the family yet mean nothing to an outsider. (5)

▪ Frank was a man of insinuations, of subtle gestures and sly asides, and long ambiguous stories rather than explicit statements. (9)

▪ Even if I found no gold I would have the satisfaction that I'd found contentment. There was no shadow of Frank here—he was far away and very small. (62)

▪ I was energized by giving money away—especially giving it to Frank, who was desperate. It was a good feeling, akin to power, bestowing it on him, something life-enhancing and mood improving. (68)

▪ "When the right time comes, I'll take my name off the deed. You'll be sole owner then." (76)

▪ It seemed my generosity was forgotten, my asking for the money back was bad manners, a kind of scheming, very unfair to him. (130)

▪ I was a liar and a cheat, unfaithful to Vita, rationalizing my behaviour by telling myself that her friendship with Frank was a form of infidelity. (175)

▪ For Vita and Frank, I was still just a rock hunter. As I had never mentioned emeralds, I never mentioned cobalt. (227)

▪ I was well aware, increasingly so over the years, that his hatred for me was fueled by obsessive envy, that he seemed bent on trying to diminish me. ... He showed me that the ultimate in hatred is not rejection; it is the refusal to let go. It was hatred as haunting. (231)

Vita

▪ "He's a piece of work," she said, yet before I could agree she said, "But so are you." (19)

▪ "Thousands of them," she said with feeling, the first note of passion I'd heard from her. "They're kidnapped. They're trafficked. They work in mines." (198)

▪ She's busy, I reasoned: her career has taken off. That explained why I was still often eating dinner alone. (233)

▪ "Here's what you need to do," she said, with a snap in her voice, a tone of decision. "First, you have to move out—we have no future here together." (235)