Double Down

What a tale: two brothers, both writers, found themselves in a plot beyond their own imagining, accused of a casino blackjack scam. But the real story, as those brothers tell it in Double Down, comes before their arrest: how, and why, did two moderately successful English professors blow their quarter-million dollar inheritance in two years of all-night binges? The answer is not your usual tale of addiction and redemption, but a wry appreciation of the irrational magic the turn of a card can bring, and the lengths two more or less sensible men will go to find it.