Dunne is good on the sordid ins and outs of the bail bonds trade ... To a contemporary reader, Dunne’s lack of a hook...is more striking than the genre agnosticism signaled by having 'memoir' in the subtitle ... To an impressive degree, Dunne fails to find much in the way of the salvation he’s looking for, or even drama ... All drift and repetition ... This messy, engrossing book is as good an example as I can recall of a talented writer unable to see himself clearly on the page. I’m so glad it’s back in print.
Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season (1974), is better—funnier, sadder, more appealingly vile—than these other attempts by his contemporaries to pin Sin City to the page ... Dunne found his perfect subject in Las Vegas ... The book’s story is harder to isolate ... At first pass, it feels slightly pointless, a novel-length exercise in New Yorker–style profiles of three oddballs, Dunne indulgently giving free rein to his 'gift for voyeurism' ... Vegas deepens and broadens in the chapters describing the young author’s education in a series of grubby-sounding boarding schools.
Didion makes only a few appearances in the book, all captivating ... Much of Dunne’s material hasn’t aged well or was too ripe to begin with ... Dunne the writer makes it impossible to untangle his own perspective from that of Dunne the narrator, which at times feels like an abdication of responsibility. But that’s one of the freedoms fiction can afford a writer ... It’s a bit sweaty to advertise all the mundane effort that goes into showbiz; at the same time, there’s something honest and workmanly about this approach.
