Keith Dixon's The Art of Losing is the best novel I've read this year.Degenerate gamblers hatch a harebrained scheme to take some money from some bad, bad men; the plan fails, but too late to do anyone any good, and one of the plotters turns out to be a weak sister.
Sounds familiar, but it's not.
The characters buy into the scheme with the same confidence they would have betting their rent--it probably won't work, but it might. The bookmaker's disgust for their clientele has never been so well captured. And that weak sister? I can't think of another character in a noir who cracks the way this guy cracks--leading to the finale, which left me with the deep Catholic jitters.
Dixon has one previous novel, Ghostfires. After reading The Art of Losing, you'll want to get your hands on that one too, and God help anyone who gets in your way.
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