The Ballad of a Small Player: A Novel
Having hastily decamped from the stuffy legal courtrooms of London to the smoky back-alley casinos of Macau, Lord Doyle tries to capitalize on the ill-gotten gains that forced his flight from his homeland by gaming the system at the island’s glitzy baccarat tables.  His fortunes rise and fall on a whim, the excesses of success mitigated by the depression of defeat.  Always one to put on a good show, however, Doyle maintains his aura of invincibility until a local call girl offers him refuge when his money runs out.  Robbing her to get enough of a stake on which to make a comeback, Doyle achieves a run of unprecedented good luck, but at what cost?  With its ex-pat angst and debauched air of moral ambiguity set amid the sinister demimonde of the Far East’s corrupt gambling dens, Osborne’s (The Forgiven, 2012) darkly introspective study of decline and decay conjures apt comparisons to Paul Bowles, Graham Greene, and V. S. Naipaul. --Carol Haggas