The Princess of Las Vegas

Though there’s a year between them, sisters Crissy and Betsy Dowling are so alike they could be twins. And they don’t only resemble each other, they also look very like one Diana Spencer, the late, lamented Princess of Wales. The resemblance is so strong that Crissy performs as Di in a long-running Las Vegas residency. The casino that hosts the emotional cabaret, the Buckingham Palace, or BP, has seen better days, as has Crissy’s relationship with her lookalike sister. Crissy claims that Betsy killed their mother, the circumstances around that a mystery for most of the book. But that doesn’t stop Betsy from re-entering her sister’s life by leaving her social worker job for her new boyfriend’s cryptocurrency firm that’s setting up shop in Vegas. When the owner of the BP is found dead, and Crissy doesn’t believe the police’s finding that it’s a suicide, it starts a chain of subterfuge and violence that makes the sort-of-royals wish that what happens in Vegas didn’t involve them. Bohjalian has intriguingly veered into a much more noir path than his usual, with the darkness complimenting his typical tight plotting and absorbing family drama. This is one for fans of campy fare mixed with family shenanigans and of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan.