Off the Rails, a review by Carlene Gadapee of Chris Bohjalian's newest novel, The Princess of Las Vegas

The Princess of Las Vegas
Chris Bohjalian
Doubleday (2024)
378 pp.

Chris Bohjalian's newest novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, is a helluva barn-burner of a novel. The premise is fairly simple: a Vermont girl, Crissy Dowling, with a measure of talent and a need to run from her own past happens to look a lot like Princess Diana, and she has developed a performance (not a tribute!) that mixes events from Di's life with some old chestnut songs. She has a residency at a B-list casino just off the strip, and she is pretty darn successful, at least professionally. Her personal life is a bit of a wreck, but she manages that as best she can. She has some dependency issues, but they are mostly just part of her daily routine. So is ignoring her sister back in Vermont.

Her sister, Becky Dowling, has her own set of problems, some stemming from their difficult childhood, and others the product of professional burnout as a social worker who works with troubled kids and families. She has entered into a relationship with the separated-but-not-yet-divorced father of one of her last clients, and he suggests that she move to Las Vegas; he is going there, because he is part of a company that deals in cryptocurrency. Becky has just adopted a 13-year-old girl who was also one of her last cases, and the move seems ideal, giving her a change of scenery, a change of careers, and a new start for all of them.

This is where things go wildly off the rails. Vegas, often called Sin City, is all that and more. Include some very dangerous mob-style characters, an ultra-conservative female US Senator, and a whole lot of money and guns, and clearly, the two women have landed separately but inadvertently in some very troubled waters. Becky also looks like a dead ringer for her sister, and thus also looks a lot like Princess Diana. This is an interesting wrinkle in the story, and one that becomes not only irritating to Crissy, who has carved out a life for herself in Vegas without her sister and reminders of their unfortunate childhood, but becomes a difficulty for Becky as well.

I'm not going to say a whole lot more, because I don’t want to give away any of the surprises and plot twists. I will, however, state that the teenager helps save them, and yay, for that. I rarely (okay never) look at the last page of a book to see how it's all going to turn out. I got to the last fifty or so pages, and found myself skim-reading parts (sorry, Mr. Bohjalian), because I had to know what was coming. I did peek at the last page, but I only scanned to see if the principal characters were still alive by the end of the book. 

The whole thing may seem crazy, but it's not. Crypto is seen as a little shady or at least very unfamiliar to most people, even for those who understand the math and so on. There are many entrepreneurs in the “fintech” world who are lobbying hard to allow cryptocurrency to go forth unfettered; "money" can and will be made, hand over fist, and they don't want any government regulation of it. There are unsavory characters in our real world, some who occupy positions of wealth and influence on a global scale. And there are teenaged girls who are resourceful and who have access to a good education, who have been given the chance to learn and explore what they are good at, and who can do things that no one suspects they even know how to do. Two sisters from Vermont landing in Vegas is not all that far-fetched; I went to high school with a very smart guy whom everyone thought was going to go to a big-name college, and he ended up in Vegas, at least for a few years, working the tables. He made huge money out there, and then went to college, and I heard he paid cash. This is the glittering and potentially toxic allure of Las Vegas, and the backdrop for this very entertaining novel. 

Bohjalian's gift is to lead us on an increasingly uneasy journey that imperils his very believable characters; not all of them live, few can be trusted, and that's always because people have things they carry with them that aren't all that lovely in the light of day. His characters live and move realistically in the framework of the story, and the situations are both stressful and very likely, if the conditions are present. I think that's what scares me (delightfully) when I'm reading his novels; the things in the story can and often do happen. What I really like is that Bohjalian teaches us things, too. He makes the reader think about topics like cryptocurrency and Russian oligarchs, both elements of the news, but by embodying these issues into characters and moving them around in a compelling narrative helps the reader understand just how dangerous they are. I appreciate that, and I hope you do as well.

A poet-teacher both by vocation and by trade, Carlene M. Gadapee’s poetry and critical reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications, including English Journal, Waterwheel Review, Gyroscope Review, Smoky Quartz, Think, Allium, Vox Populi, and MicroLit Almanac. Carlene also received a “Best of the Net” nomination in 2023. Her chapbook, What to Keep, will be released by Finishing Line Press in early 2025. Carlene lives and works in northern New Hampshire.