As Sammy's star imploded

If the book has a weakness, it is an excess of credulity. Birkbeck buys Murray's entire line, not just the pants and shirts, but also the wraps and stoles. As you read, you can't help but wonder about the lawyer's true motivations: Was it the possibility of a big paycheck, or was it the desire to mix his name with those of celebrities? (When you learn that Murray is working on a screenplay, you say, "Oh, so that's why he wanted in on all those Hollywood meetings!") At times, Murray seems like one of the characters in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," who give up everything in quest of riches, only to watch the gold blow away in the final scene.

Altovise Gore, according to the book's closing pages, is penniless. She lives in a roach-infested apartment without a refrigerator and picks through dumpsters for bottles. It makes me think of the first line of Ford Madox Ford's novel "The Good Soldier": "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

Only "Deconstructing Sammy" is much sadder. Whereas the Ford book is set in the expatriate resorts of Europe between world wars, Sammy's story is set in the oxygen-crammed casinos of Vegas, where, as any wiseguy can tell you, the machines are fixed and the house always wins. Sammy stayed at the tables as long as his money held out, then a little longer.