For author with long and varied career, every moment tells a story

Edward Silberstang has been a criminal investigator for the Army, a New York lawyer and a gambler, but through it all, he's been a storyteller and writer.

Ask him a question, and he'll tell you a story that leads to another story that is part of another story.

How did he start writing fiction? He was representing a gay man who wanted a divorce from his wife, a polio victim, and met with the wife's lawyer. The wife's lawyer saw a manuscript of a novel Silberstang had written and showed the manuscript to a book publisher who played racquetball with him. Meanwhile, Silberstang and the other lawyer persuaded the couple to stay together.

"They needed each other," Silberstang said.

Since then, Silberstang has written 52 books, including six novels and many gambling how-to books. Late last year, he revised one of his most successful books, "Winning at Craps," for Random House.

Question: Did your father want you to go to law school?

Answer: I said, "I'll go to law school if any of these three accept me, Harvard, Yale or Columbia." Columbia accepted. I guess I could handle it, but I had no interest in it. (He dropped out.) The Korean War was on. It was cannon fodder time. I signed up for the Army the day before the Marines started drafting.

Question: How did they select you for the Army Criminal Investigation Command?

Answer: I made 100 percent on an intelligence test. They asked, "Do you want to be in counterintelligence?" I said, "Where do I sign?"

Then after completing basic training, two members of the military police came for me and marched me into a building. A colonel and two captains were there. They had all my records on the table.

They asked, "Do you know (writer) James T. Farrell. Is he a communist?" I said. "He was Trotskyite." They said, "You know a lot about communism." This interview lasted 45 minutes. The colonel said, "As far as we're concerned, you're garbage, and you're applying for a position of trust in the Army, which would give you top-secret clearance. Get out of here." He took all my papers and threw them in my face. He said, "Don't bother saluting. You're not a soldier as far as we're concerned."

I went downstairs. The MPs were there. One of them had handcuffs. He kept opening and closing them. One asked, "You like Kansas? Leavenworth, Kansas? Where do you think you're going? You're lucky if you go to the front lines in Korea."

They said, "Just stay here."

I must have stayed down there (alone) for an hour. They called me back upstairs. The colonel handed me a card. He had a big smile.

He said, "You start school Monday morning."

Question: Were they testing you to see how you stood up against adversity?

Answer: Yes. Guys would jump out the window. They would panic. They would run for their lives.

Question: Where did you serve?

Answer: I showed up at 42 Broadway in a hat and uniform. The major said, "Here's $300. Go to Brooks Bros., and buy yourselves some good clothing. You're not going to wear a uniform anymore. You're undercover from now on."

Question: What did do when you left the Army?

Answer: I was married by then and had one kid and another on the way. I worked full time and went to Brooklyn Law School at night. I went into partnership with my father, a lawyer.

Question: Any interesting cases?

Answer: One of the guys I represented was charged with assault with intent to kill. The client said, "Ah, this guy is not going to show up." Eventually, I got it dismissed. A year later, I got a phone call from a detective who found the (victim) at the bottom of a canal with a hammer in his head.

Question: How did you become a writer?

Answer: A friend, psychiatrist Albert Crum, persuaded me to write a novel, and a lawyer saw the manuscript in my office. He asked if he could show it to a friend who worked at Simon & Schuster.

Question: So they published the novel as one of their Pocket Books. What was the name of that book?

Answer: "Rapt in Glory." It's about three men from Brooklyn who decide to commit a robbery in which a policeman is killed and the ramifications of that crime.

Question: What then?

Answer: I visited Dachau (the Nazi concentration camp in Germany), and I wrote a book in the first person called "Nightmare of the Dark."

I got a lot of rejections, because nobody wanted to know about this. Editors at major houses said, "(The book) made me vomit. It's sickening. It's almost as if they were screaming on the page at me."

Question: What happened next?

Answer: We had a meeting with Alfred A. Knopf publishing. The first thing the editor asked me is, "What happened to your German accent?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, this is a true story isn't it?" I said, "No, it's fiction." He said, "Really."

Later, they asked me to wait outside. When I returned, there was a fourth man in the room, Alfred Knopf, with a big grin on his face.

He said, "Welcome to the house of Knopf. We're proud to publish your book."

He showed me another room and said these are all Nobel Prize winners that we published. That's when I left the law.

Question: How did you become a gambling writer?

Answer: I wrote a couple of pages on how to play blackjack and craps for a friend. My agent asked to see the pages. They went over to Playboy Press and negotiated a contract on games.

Question: What was it called and when did they publish it?

Answer: "Playboy's Book of Games," in 1974. It made me an instant authority on games.

Question: What else did you write?

Answer: "Winning Casino Craps," which came out in 1979. It sold, over the years, 115,000 copies. Random House asked me last year to bring it up to date. The new version came out in October.

Question: What do you cover in the book?

Answer: How to get credit from casinos. What bets to absolutely avoid so you always give the house the minimum edge. I also discuss how I took Matt Dillon, the actor, to Vegas. How I worked as his technical adviser to "The Big Town" (a movie about a craps dealer in Chicago in 1957).

Contact reporter John G. Edwards at jedwards@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0420.