I will be going to Las Vegas in a few weeks and I am looking a good book to read there. When I travel, I like to read books set in that destination. I read all sorts of books--both fiction and non-fiction--but for this trip I am looking for something relatively light. Does anyone know of a good novel that is set in or around Las Vegas? Thanks.

This is probably of no real use to you but...

I have read several books on Vegas mostly having to do with very early Vegas. One recent one was a fictional mystery based around the building of the Hoover Dam and 1930's Vegas.

Can't remember the names...sorry.

You might like a book called The Monkey Wrench Gang which is fiction based on actual events about environmental activists/terrorists around Glen Canyon Dam and the surrounding area.

Here is an off the wall idea: "Over the edge: Death in the Grand Canyon". This is a book that I heard about on this forum and bought. It documents and tells very interesting stories of Grand Canyon death of all sorts from the beginning of it's discovery.
May not qualify as light reading but it will give you some stories to tell at cocktail parties.

Here is an example: While it is rare that people have died just falling off the edge, it happens. Almost all cases have been young men. Why? Because men have some urge to urinate from the very edge, into the canyon. They slip and away they go. Usually beer is involved. This is fact, read the book to find out how Rangers determine this.

You have to read Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich. It's a true story about a bunch of MIT graduates who become professional blackjack players and take the big casinos for millions. Fantastic book - I read it in one sitting a couple of weeks after returning from Vegas. Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

Real-life all too rarely offers stories that are quite as satisfying as fiction. Bringing Down the House is one of the exceptions. Cheating in casinos is illegal; card-counting - making a record of what cards have so far been dealt to enable the player to make some prediction of what cards remain in the deck - is not. But casinos understandably dislike the practice and make every effort to keep card-counters out of their premises, banning them and using private detectives to share information on suspected and known counters. Bringing Down the House tells the true story of the most successful scam ever, in which teams of brilliant young mathematicians and physicists won millions of dollars from the casinos of Las Vegas, being drawn in the process into the high-life of drugs, high-spending and sex. Bringing Down the House is as readable and as fascinating as Liar's Poker or Barbarians At the Gate, an insight into a closed, excessive and utterly corrupt world.

James McManus' Positively Fifth Street, the author's zigzagging description of his own exploits as a rank amateur getting lucky in the World Series of Poker, interlaced with a fascinating account of Ted Binion's murder and the legal/cultural world of high-stakes Vegas, is a book that people love (me) or dislike (she). But you ought to read it as a history if nothing else. Oh man, what a place.

Do you mean besides something written by Hunter S. Thompson?

The following books are set in Las Vegas. For a detail description go to Amazon.

The Butcher's Boy by Thomas Perry
Las Vegas Comp: Murder At The Emerald Tower by Don McKenzie
Dice Angel By Brian Rouff
Money Shot By Brian Rouff

Here's a second recommendation for Bringing Down The House. I picked up a copy at the Vegas airport on my way home, and it was a real page turner!

My suggestion for a must read would be Running Scared: The Life and Trecherous Times of Casino King Steve Wynn. Many Las Vegans have this book. Sure, there are lots of stories about this guy (he is the most powerful man in LV) and this book talks about his rise to fame and supposed connections to the mob. Is it "light"? Not sure but it is definitely interresting and you will learn about how the city became what it is today Have a great trip!

I thought this was a thread about sports betting. lol

I really enjoyed a booked entitled, "Super Casino" that was all about the advent of the Super Casino (i.e., Luxor, Mandalay Bay, MGM, etc) in LV.