The Ponzi Man

by Declan Lynch

"All I have is a mobile home and a wife somewhere up in Dublin who despises me, and this strange feeling that I am on the brink of discovering the meaning of life ... "John Devlin has lost all that he owned, and all that a lot of other people owned, through internet gambling. His once-celebrated financial genius has now made him notorious. They are calling him the Ponzi Man.Waiting to stand trial for stealing his clients' money, he goes back to live in a caravan in a seaside resort in which he spent the summers of his childhood, where memories and living reminders of better times taunt him.John's young solicitor James tries to persuade him to embark on a programme of rehabilitation, to reduce his jail sentence. He is just a gambler, he insists, a gambler who ran out of time. But even with his trial less than a month away, he is contemplating one last big play.Richly insightful, deeply humorous, often poignant, The Ponzi Man skilfully reveals the inner-world of a man who knows every maddening thing about gambling, except how to give it up.

Genres: Irish Literature

Paperback

First published May 12, 2016

Reviews

[Oakleigh Irish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story of a professional gambler who loses millions of other people's money and faces the prospect of up to 7 years jail for his crimes. It's a snapshot really with just three characters and extended reflections on the lure of betting and the shame of failure and fraud. Protagonist John does experience a degree of catharsis as he goes to Gamblers Anonymous meetings and moves past the dire urge to bet. The lawyer is an odd character, bibulous and supportive of John way beyond typical legal services. The fall may be a great one from high luxury to the trailer park, but The Ponzi Man weighs in on the folly of gambling driven by compulsion and addiction.

[Ben Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book 4 of 2025
3.5 stars

As this book progressed, it grew on me. I didn’t find the writing particularly gripping but the way Declan Lynch presents the mind of struggling gambler feels very raw and authentic demonstrating his deep understanding of the topic. The other characters, while a little more one dimensional, were fine and the plot is presented and concluded satisfactorily.

[Grim-Anal King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts of quite compellingly but the plot flails around as the author tries to spin it out to novel length. A man so temperamentally inconsistent would never have been successful in this field in the first place.

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Devlin is a sick man. Having blown his life to pieces through gambling, he is two weeks away from being sent to jail for swindling gullible Celtic tiger-era investors out of their savings, poverty-stricken and reduced to living (if you could even call it that) in a poxy caravan on the edge of the town he grew up in. And then his childhood friend, the misanthropic alcoholic Ed Brennan, returns into his life with a proposition...

"The Ponzi Man" is proof that few write as insightfully, perceptively or as eloquently about addiction as Declan Lynch. He is peerless at depicting the delusions and deceptions the addict (whether the gambler John Devlin or the alcoholic Ed Brennan) play on themselves in order to feed their compulsions. Lynch writes about addiction without resorting to a shred of sanctimony or self-righteousness, and with searing insight into psychology of the chronic gambler ("Gambling is about a lot of things but in the end it's about being proved right", "Gambling is only a disease if you lose"). “The Ponzi Man” is replete with such descriptions of the gambler’s mind-set, of what drives them to have 20 grand riding on an online stream of an obscure tennis match taking place in Rio de Janeiro at 4 in the morning.

“The Ponzi Man” can be quite a dark book, as you might expect from a story revolving around one man’s battle to keep his gambling addiction at bay, to resist sinking even further towards the abyss. But Declan Lynch really manages to infuse the story with tension, and to really make the reader care about the fate of characters that, in the hands of a lesser writer, might come across as self-centred, self-destructive wasters. “The Ponzi Man” is a blistering portrayal of the nature of addiction.

[James McCarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm afraid I really didn't enjoy this book. It was meandering and very repetitive and would have benefitted from some judicious editing. It felt like there was quite a decent short story fighting to get out but unfortunately it didn't.

[U. Cronin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read. Exactly what you'd expect from Declan Lynch — world-weary, wry, a series of beat-down characters. Perhaps his best book.