Local author fills gap with fun series set in Vegas

It seems every author loves to write about Las Vegas. There’s just something about this dizzying, wacky, over-the-top town that appeals to the storyteller. But most authors make quick work of it and few return. Crazy, I think, because the city is the perfect setting for a good series of novels.

In fact, there is one, Vicki Pettersson’s fine Sign of the Zodiac dark urban fantasy series (the latest, “Cheat the Grave,” released in May). This is not typically my genre, but I love these novels. They bring out the edgy side of life and/or death in Vegas.

But what I was really looking for was something goofy and glitzy, sassy and spicy, with a little fizz, a little bite. Something that laughs at Las Vegas the way we laugh at ourselves. And finally, someone has done it.

Deborah Coonts’ “Wanna Get Lucky?” is the first of at least a three-part series and I hope many more. She fleshes out the clichés and gives giddy life to what I think most people want to see in novels about Las Vegas: fun, fun, fun.

It is a hybrid, part mystery, mostly chick lit. It opens with a woman doing a deathly swan dive into the pirate show waters at Treasure Island. We can’t solve the murder, though, without a stop for a little makeover at the spa, among numerous other distractions.

The protagonist is Lucky O’Toole — yes, Lucky, might as well go all the way, I say — who heads up customer relations at the Babylon hotel-casino. This gives her opportunity to intercede/interfere in practically everything going on in the casino, from dealing with an enormous naked drunk sleeping it off in a stairwell to wrangling porn and swingers’ conventions to facing off with snakes of the human and reptilian varieties.

With a name like Lucky, you know her life has been colorful. She was raised in a Pahrump bordello by her Southern belle-style madam mother. And you know she has enough money for all the clothes and shoes and a high-rise home and hot, hot car that makes the guys as crazy as her tall, sexy figure.

But because this is primarily chick lit, we don’t hate her. She’s just insecure enough that even though we can’t fully relate, we want to see what happens next. Which of the two hunky guys she will choose: the hotel security officer she is suspicious of or the Harvard-educated female impersonator who is her best friend and remarkably, not gay. And she cracks wise at the many variations of Las Vegas’ smoke and mirrors.

Lucky has a good idea who committed the murder, but not why it was deemed necessary. Although she can do most of the legwork with the resources from the hotel, she does win over a young detective for that key link to the cops when she needs one.

(And for those keeping track of whether Lucky knows her way around town like she does her megaresort, not to worry. Coonts, who lives here, stays on track with street names and landmarks. In fact, Coonts is the speaker for this month’s Las Vegas Writers Group meeting at 7 p.m. June 17 at the Tap House, 5589 W. Charleston Blvd. Meetings are open to the public.)

For those looking for a silly, sexy summer read, Deborah Coonts has filled the order. And, better yet, there are more to come.