Douglas Stewart's Blog, page 2

Pre-Order DEADLINE VEGAS on Amazon NOW

First of all, my thriller Deadline Vegas – His Obsession- Casino Revenge is available on Pre-Order NOW on Amazon for eBook publication on 18th June 2020.

PRE-ORDER DEADLINE VEGAS NOW

CLICK HERE

UK https://amznbook.co/2YsrHHF

USA https://amznbook.co/3f7f9v8

Reviews

“Brilliant exciting book. If ever a book was perfect to be made into a movie this is it!”

“I hope Mr Stewart will take us on another journey with these main characters.”

“Full of drama from beginning to end. This truly is a book you can’t put down.”

“Deadline Vegas, a great read, gripping stuff, you wonder where Douglas Stewart is taking you. A well informed and obviously much travelled author.”

THE STORYLINE

“Dex” Dexter’s sister dies mysteriously after confronting a casino boss for cheating her of a big win. Having promised her to seek revenge, Dex rushes headlong into a dangerous world of powerful casino bosses in London and Las Vegas. Their new multi-billion casino in Vegas is soon to open and Dex has vowed that will never happen. Suddenly, he is trapped in a world of money-laundering, murder and corruption as he races against the clock to keep the promise. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

INSPIRATION FOR PLOT

Most importantly, at the time, my work as an international lawyer gave me insight to the casino world because I was providing advice about casino operational issues in both Las Vegas and London.I created the plot when living for many years in both cities. Those happy days led to my starting point of any thriller: I ask myself WHAT IF? In the case of DEADLINE VEGAS, the question was: Do casinos cheat the players and what happens if they do?



MOST ASKED QUESTION

Casino staff may cheat you but they are being closely watched. Also, sometimes they conspire with the players to cheat the casino, a big danger to management. Finally, in certain countries where the regulators are lax, casinos themselves may cheat you – but it will be more subtle than magnets under roulette wheels.

TODAY

In contrast to the great days I had living there, as I write, the ghost-town that The Strip and Piccadilly Circus had become are slowly showing signs of coming back from the dead. These are indeed troubled times. Hopefully the problems of Covid 19 will soon be over.

My Website

Read more about me and my writing:

https://www.douglasstewartbooks.com/

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Deadline Vegas – Do Casinos go Bust?

Excitingly, Deadline Vegas is now on Amazon Pre-Order at a discounted price until 18th June 2020, It involves the storyline of Dex Dexter’s obsession with casino revenge and destruction of a cheating casino. This makes it timely to answer one of the questions that I am asked about casinos and casino crime. There are two typical questions. Do casinos go bust? Do casinos cheat? I shall deal with cheating casinos in a separate Blog.

Yes – casinos do go bust and more often that you might think!

My Investigation.

Firstly, Deadline Vegas was inspired because I was hired to investigate why a major resort casino in Las Vegas was going bust. My role as an expert then living in Vegas started me thinking about what may happen if a casino runs into financial difficulty.This inspired Deadline Vegas. In my report, I identified a significant number of issues but fine-tuned them down to the top 20.

Interestingly, in a multi-billion casino, getting one issue wrong would rarely sink the ship. That would lead to reduced profits. But, like the drip-drip of a tap, 20 problems were just too serious. The cash flow needed never met the huge overheads. In effect, that casino went bust and over the years, other well-known resort casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City have rushed to Chapter 11 for protection from creditors

Old Vegas

Historically, in the early days of Las Vegas, the casino offering was the opportunity to gamble, have a drink and a meal. The focus was on gambling. Providing drinks, cheap or free buffets or comped gourmet meals for the high-rollers was the hook. Famous entertainers like Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley helped draw in crowds to the roulette wheels and craps. But Vegas gradually evolved into a resort destination providing a complete experience for families. Time spent at the gaming tables fell. Conference Centres filled vast areas but too many delegates partied in bars and restaurants than at roulette wheels or blackjack.The gaming-floor is no cash-cow to be milked like in the pre-1980s.

Pandemic

Now with the global pandemic, these glittering resorts have been empty and finances stretched to the ultimate. So far there has been no sign of the big boys again resorting to Chapter 11, perhaps due to furlough.

Casino Revenge

In conclusion, Deadline Vegas reveals how Dex Dexter learns the weaknesses in casinos as he plots to avenge his sister and destroy a huge casino group. They had cheated her at roulette. As he jets between London and Las Vegas, Dex finds that he has taken on a ruthless giant. Sadly, his sister had discovered that too late.

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Have you been catfished?

Have you been catfished? You may not find out for days, weeks or months. I have now been catfished twice on my Facebook pages. The first time was some 18 months back and the second time last month.

The strange word arose from the drama documentary made in 2010 – called Catfish! A “catfish” is someone who pretends to be someone else online. This person assumes a fake identity to make their victim believe they are who they say they are. It tends to happen a lot in online dating – not my situation!

In the movie a ‘catfish’ called Angela made out that she was much younger to attract a much younger person. She wanted to escape her marriage and restore an artistic part of her life through hooking a young photographer.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/18/catfis...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

Catfishing is fairly common but it is unpleasant, disconcerting, irritating and leaves an uneasy feeling when it happens to you. If taking my Facebook profile and using it might seem to be flattering, it sure does not feel like that! Catfishing can lead to a stolen ID and in my case, my Facebook followers were receiving fake messages seemingly coming from me. Many well-known celebrities have had their profile stolen or adopted to help fool the unwary. I was lucky because followers were quick to alert me to weird messages seeming to come from me.

In short, I became very disillusioned with social media but I am now expecting to post regularly again on Facebook and to keep up to date on my blog. a good read on this is on Metro https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/18/catfis...

I will be updating you this month about big changes on my current website https://www.DouglasStewartBooks.com and about my new thriller Deadline Vegas being published in June 2020.

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England Test Match to be FIXED

The headlines in the Daily Telepgraph on 26th May 2018 are a stark warning of the ongoing dangers to cricket and other international sports from gangsters who fix results to win big on the black market for gambling – at the cost of honest punters.

No question, bodies who run cricket, tennis and other major sports are working increasingly together to catch these dangerous and wealthy criminals. If you have not yet read my latest thriller DEAD FIX, you will discover how this problem stretches globally as London detective Todd “Ratso” Holtom seeks to bring down the masterminds operating from the Middle East and the Asian sub-continent.

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Corruption in Sport – Tennis under the Cosh!

Following on from the Australian cricket team being caught cheating in a recent Test match in South Africa has now come the revelation that an Independent Review Panel set up in 2016 has established a tsunami of fixed tennis-matches.

In Dead Fix, my thriller about sporting corruption, I touched on tennis as having been infiltrtaed by organised criminals, some from Italy. This new report has established that fixing in tennis is reponsible for three times as much fixing as all other sports put together.

14.5% of players (464) admitted knowledge of fixed matches but the problem was dominated by lower levels of the professional game.

I can accept that this is so but my concern, as highligted in dramatic style in Dead Fix, is that once a player is known to be corruptible or corrupted, they can be blackmailed or exploited as they progress in the game up to Grand Slam events.

The Report noted that there was some evidence that a top player was permitted to retire from the game in 2003 to avoid public exposure. Perhaps more of the truth of this will emerge. A quick search on the web gave me a likely candidate

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Sir Peter Blake – Terror at Sea

Sir Peter Blake -Legendary Yachtsman – Major Development

Sir Peter, who was probably the world’s best-known and successful yachtsman was murdered on the Amazon River in Brazil in December 2001. Overnight, his yacht was moored in the centre of this mega-river when it was attacked by a bunch of thugs known in Brazil as “river-rats.”

He and the crew were placed in a situation where a happy ending is always unlikely. Hoping to be able to defend his crew, Sir Peter ran to his cabin to fetch a gun. However, in the confrontation, he was shot dead.

The gang were arrested and convicted but the ringleader Jose Cardoso escaped after a year but has now been recaptured after 16 years on the run, living under a new identity.

In Terror at Sea, I wrote the full story of this murder among many examples of the dangers whether from cargo-ship stealers in the Far East, to pirates off Africa or drug-runners in the Caribbean.

The news today is very welcome as Cardoso has a further 31 years of his sentence to run.

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Dead Fix – now published

Delighted to have supportive reviews from such eminent and renowned authors as Peter James and Simon Toyne. Thanks to them for their support as momentum builds.

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The Al-Hilli Murders 5th September 2012 – another for Ratso?

In a location that was even more remote than I had expected, I visited the layby where 21 shots were fired and three members of a UK-Iraqi family were murdered. One daughter was uninjured, hidden beneath her mother’s body in the rear of the family BMW. Her sister was shot in the shoulder and hit on the head but survived. In the road was a French cyclist, also executed.

Det. Insp Todd “Ratso” Holtom would have loved being brought in to such an international investigation.

Ever since that day, the French and British police have sought to uncover the motive for a mass-execution. Theories abound from this being a local issue where the family were collateral damage to the murder of the cyclist to the reverse where the cyclist was an unlucky victim of a planned and cynical murder of Mr Al-Hilli and his family by a trained assassin.

The warning sign at the start of this steep single-track road leading up into the French Alps near Lake Annecy is no encouragement to drive up there, even on a sunny day, let alone like I did in wintry conditions in January. The family were not dressed for hiking – more like for an afternoon jaunt from their camping spot near the lake.

A witness confirmed that the family suddenly switched camping sites and that a suited man was involved in a confrontation with Saad Al-Hilli at the campsite – hitting the bonnet of the car as he left.

Was there something in Mr Al-Hilli’s background that verged on top-secret? This has been denied officially but that does not mean that it is not true. There were also some family difficulties with the brother but nothing suggests that such a complex crime to arrange could sensibly point in his direction.

Locally, as in many small communities like the nearby hamlet of Chevaline, passions can run deep and theories abound about local intrigue leading to the shootings using an old Luger. Such a gun was found in the house of a suspect but the owner has never been charged.

In August 2017, five years later, the police linked these murders to a possible French serial killer but again no charges have been preferred.It has been described as the perfect murder. Perhaps it is and to me that points more to something sinister surrounding what Mr Al-Hilli officially did and what else he may have done. The remote and curious location adds to my suspicions that Mr Al-Hilli was lured there for one purpose but whoever invited him had other plans in mind. perhaps the suited man knows the answer. You don’t get many folk dressed like that on a Frech campsite in blazing heat

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Dead Fix

With the ebook version of Dead Fix now on Pre-Order at Kindle for release on 28th January (to pre-order click on this link – http://amzn.to/2ESOjUO ), there is plenty going on beneath the surface!

Besides the build-up with interviews and developing PR on social media, nest week I meet the TV production team who are interested in turning my Det.Insp.Todd “Ratso” Holtom stories including Hard Place and Dead Fix into a series.

Talk comes cheap but that is still much better than spurning the chance to bring Ratso to life on the screen. Anyway, it is always stimulating to meet the guys who usually see the books differently and turn storylines on their heads for dramatic effect.

At the end of a previous development process to turn Cellars’ Market into a for a movie, my Brit macho male lead became an American glitzy female – sex change without surgery!

I await next week’s meeting with enthusiastic curiosity if not wild optimism!

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Was it Murder – Send for Ratso?

The picture shows the family home of Barry & Honey Sherman at 50 Old Colony Rd, Toronto. Their fabulous mansion had been for sale. Photos of the house and pool are on the web.

The police were still guarding the billionaire’s $5 million property when I visited the location.

This month, the elderly couple were found hanging from rails surrounding their indoor pool.

Very curiously, one description has them with jackets pulled behind their backs and pinning their arms. There were seemingly men’s belts around their necks while they were suspended in a semi-sitting position with their legs out straight.

Initially the police seemed to assume it was murder-suicide or suicide-suicide but now they are tight-lipped following pressure from the family to consider it murder by a third party.

The veteran pharmaceutical billionaire was well known and respected and the nation awaits developments on this tragedy involving Canada’s 7th richest man. Officially, the police are now calling the deaths “suspicious” while the family have hired their own retired detective investigator.

Ratso would just love getting stuck into this mystery. Whilst much loved by many, Barry Sherman’s business life in pharmaceuticals had provoked considerable controversial litigation.

As my thriller The Dallas Dilemma revealed, enmities in that industry can run high.

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