Dice Angel
 Brian Rouff
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Hardway Press
  ISBN: 0971714819

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Jimmy Delancy is on another bad roll in Las Vegas. His ex-wife is cranky & demanding. His taxes are due. A homeless guy keeps scaring the hell out of him & burglars have cleaned out all the video poker machines in his saloon, Jimmy D's.

His accountant is missing--along with all Jimmy's money. His lawyer is brushing him off, & he's just dissed the humorless IRS agent, who moonlights in a retro-band, & is intent on seizing Jimmy D's. What more could go wrong?

Dice Angel is one weird, funny & hair-raising read! Written with an immediacy that mimics the feelings you too would get were your telephone to ring at 3 in the morning with a police officer on the other end.

Then he calls the number on a business card deadbeat Pete had handed him. Into Jimmy's collapsing world comes a mysterious woman spouting karmic catch-phrases, astrological aphorisms & suggestions for colonic cleansing. Jimmy is not unaffected by the innuendoes! They team up & Jimmy returns to the craps tables, to come face-to-face with his luck, lady or otherwise.

Dice Angel is populated with a cast of characters I'd like to meet! They are feisty & funny, slimy & stupid--regular folks with jaded senses of humor & brusque affections. Jimmy has an entertaining sense of the absurd, hitting his shins on just about everything he can, a splendid specimen & actually quite lovable! He is also a gambler who doesn't gamble. A drunk who doesn't drink & a smoker who doesn't smoke--go figure! In the extremis of his downward spiral, he does, however, topple off the wagon on all three counts.

Good dialogue, enticing momentum, & some hilarious scenes & jokes, makes Dice Angel a lively, entertaining read & an interesting mini-vacation on the sands of Sodom & Gomorrah complete with appropriate language & misery!

Great fun! Memorable, with a good resolution -- I sure hope Brian Rouff has another Jimmy Delancy adventure up his sleeve!
(03/30/03)

Rebecca