Fools Die

Fools Die is a novel by the American writer Mario Puzo, published in 1978. It moves between New York, Las Vegas and Hollywood, and Puzo said afterwards that it was his own favourite of his books.

The book begins in Las Vegas, at a hotel where a group of men who have never met before are all staying for the same reason: to gamble. John Merlyn, Cully Cross and Jordan Hawley fall in with one another, not because they have anything in common but because each of them has decided, for reasons of his own, to spend weeks at the tables, and the novel follows the relationship that comes out of those weeks.

From there the story widens into the industries that grew up around the same appetites: the film business, the publishing trade and the organised crime that underwrites the parts of both that cannot be discussed. Merlyn is a writer, and the character is generally taken to be closely based on Puzo himself. The paperback rights to the novel were sold the same year for a then-record sum.