You like stories about Las Vegas, right? You know, stories about washed-out, recently-widowed, alcoholic card sharks, and the thugs who try to kill them before the one last big game? If you do, and you won’t be scared off by some deftly handled mystical mumbo jumbo along the way, you’ll get a kick out of Last Call.

Certain themes cling to tales about Las Vegas like the stench from a cheap cigar (luck versus fate, power versus misery, surreal fantasy versus crushing reality). Tim Powers turns these metaphoric ideas into the ground rules of grim supernatural crime story about the heirs of Bugsy Siegel and the battle to become the next emperor of Sin City.