John O'Brien's 1990 debut novel is one of the bleakest portraits of the city ever written. Ben, a Hollywood screenwriter, comes to Las Vegas with the explicit plan of drinking himself to death; Sera, a sex worker, becomes his companion through the slow self-destruction. The book is short, controlled, and unsparing.
O'Brien wrote what he knew. He shot himself two weeks after Mike Figgis's 1995 film adaptation was greenlit; the screen version won Nicolas Cage an Oscar for the lead role. Together the book and film are a corrective to the playful Vegas of advertising — they are the Vegas of long-term residents who never made it back out, told with sympathy rather than judgment. Difficult reading, but essential.