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Spiegel & Grau
July 2010
On Sale: June 22, 2010
256 pages
ISBN: 0385526458
EAN: 9780385526456
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
An eye-popping and hilarious joyride through the underworld of sports betting
Beth Raymer arrived in Las Vegas in 2001, hoping to land a job as a cocktail waitress at one of the big casinos. In the meantime, she lived in a $17-a-night motel with her dog, Otis, and waited tables at a low-rent Thai restaurant. One day, one of her regular customers told her about a job she thought Beth would be perfect for and sent her to see Dink, of Dink Inc. Dink was a professional sports gamblerβone of the biggest in Vegas. He was looking for a right-hand manβsomeone who would show up on time, who had a head for numbers, and who didnβt steal. She got the job.
Lay the Favorite is the story of Beth Raymerβs years in the high-stakes, high-anxiety world of sports bettingβa period that saw the fall of the local bookie and the rise of the freewheeling, unregulated offshore sports book, and with it the elevation of sports betting in popular culture. As the business explodes, Beth risesβfrom assistant to expert, trusted and seasoned enough to open an offshore booking office in the Caribbean with a few associates, men who leave their families up north to make a quick killing, while donning new tropical personas fueled by abundant drugs and local girlfriends, and who one by one succumb to their vices. They lie, cheat, steal, and run, until Beth is the last man standing.
Beth Raymer is a natural storyteller: funny, charming, and fully awake to the ironies around her. But she is also a keen and compassionate observer of the adrenaline-addicted, rougish types who become her mentors, her enemies, her family. Raymer brings to life a world that teems with pathos and ecstasy in this wild picaresque that also tells the story of a young womanβs crazy, sexy, most unlikely coming-of-age. a
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - June 21, 2010
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