Viva Las Vegas
I wrote a spicy cozy mystery entitled “The Salacious
Scribes Mystery” that takes place in Las Vegas and is about a group of erotic
romance writers who go to the Adult Entertainment Expo and while there, their
promoter is murdered.
For research purposes while writing this book, I decided
to go to Las Vegas and play tourist in the city in order to get some
inspiration for some of the scenes of my story. I planned to stay with my
husband at the Bellagio and hoped we would get of view of the famous water show
for which that the hotel is known. We were very lucky to score a 14th
floor view of the fountains with Las Vegas’s version of the Eiffel Tower in the
background.
While there, I played the slot machines for the first
time. It was fun; I lost; will never do it again; but it was a once in a life
time experience.
From there, I was seriously inspired to get to know
the history of Las Vegas so my husband and I booked a night-time tour of the
Neon Museum where we could see the old neon signs of the retro Las Vegas hotels
that existed before they were blown up in order to make way for newer and
snazzier hotels. There is such a beauty in well crafted neon and this museum
lived up to its reputation.
After that, we visited the Mob Museum. I wrote an
entire chapter in my book that described this very interesting museum. Here’s
an excerpt:
“My husband and I both enjoyed the HBO series, The
Sopranos, and the organized-crime movies by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford
Coppola. So, we headed out in the
blazing Vegas sun to go see the museum. After a short drive, we found it and
parked. The museum was a three-storied
brick building.
Once inside, we traveled back to the infamous days of
crime in Las Vegas and throughout the United States, starting from the 20s when
prohibition had allowed opportunists, such as Al Capone, to make their fortunes
satisfying the thirst of Americans who craved alcohol.
The first room we visited showed a simulated police
lineup where visitors could pose, holding up signs that looked like license
plates with unique numbers. Some
teenagers posed in front of a back wall that showed a height chart. They had
their picture taken by a professional cameraman supplied by the museum and had
a hard time keeping a straight face because they kept giggling.
Next, we saw the blood-stained wall where the Saint
Valentine's Day Massacre occurred in Chicago. Circles surrounded the bloody
holes where Al Capone and his gang had mown down their rivals. My husband sat
in a real electric chair and I took a picture, capturing the moment.
The teenagers caught up with us and one of them sat in
the electric chair. His friend pulled
down a nearby lever and, as he did so, his buddy on the electric chair twitched
as if he were being electrocuted. It was cute to watch them having such a good
time, especially at a museum.
Next, my husband and I walked into a room wallpapered
with dollars. We read a sign that told
us about the “skim” at the Stardust. It explained how profits were
under-counted and under-reported to the IRS by the crime bosses. The owner at
the Stardust, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, arranged for a bit of those
profits to be skimmed off periodically and sent back to the mob bosses on the
east coast. It was the basis for the movie Casino. I remembered watching how great Robert di
Nero and Sharon Stone were in the movie and it got me thinking about the naked
lady that Bluebeard was with on the night he was killed. What if she, like the Sharon Stone character,
was in-deep with organized crime? Maybe
she helped Bluebeard make his drug deals? Maybe they did even worse crimes
together? Child porno, perhaps? Human trafficking? What if they were stealing
authors’ stories and publishing them under another name? It certainly was a lot to consider.
My husband interrupted my revelry by saying, “Come on,
honey. Let’s see the rest of the
museum. You seem glued to this exhibit.”
“Sorry, hon. I
was just thinking about Bluebeard.”
“Forget about him.
You’re with me now. We don’t have
much time left before you have to drive me to the airport.”
I put his hand in mine and said, “I’m sorry, honey.
You’re right. Let’s go see the next one.”
He smiled and we went together to see the next
room. Right next to the skim room was an
exhibit my husband really enjoyed. There
were two long and narrow halls that were fashioned to look like firing ranges
and at the far end of each hall were life-sized paper targets shaped like men.
My husband got a chance to touch, hold, and “fire" an actual Tommy Gun at
one of the “men”.
The next room was the centerpiece of the Mob Museum.
It was the real-life second-floor courtroom where hearings had been held to
expose organized crime in 1950 and 1951.
We left that room and saw a film that showed the
bloody remains of dead gangsters. Real
members of The Mob had been interviewed. We went downstairs and watched clips
from Goodfellas and The Godfather.”
###
So, that’s a brief excerpt of my spicy PG-rated cozy
mystery that takes place in Las Vegas. Why not give it a read and decide
whether or not you’d like to spend a few days there where you can do some
historical research along with seeing shows, eating good food, playing the
slots, and drinking more than you should. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,
right?
This cozy mystery costs only 99 cents and is available at most eBook stores including Amazon.
Here is the Amazon Link:
