It was the end of an era, metaphorical full stop on the Mob's reign over the bright lights of Bugsy Segal's gambling mecca. For the unemployed hoods future career options lay behind bars or filling a shallow grave.

Rosenthal and his best friend and partner Anthony 'The Ant' Spilotro had moved to Las Vegas - the city "with no memory" - for a second chance. Lefty the life-long gambler, mastermind with an eye to the vast sums passing over casino tables; Spilotro an enforcer, a paranoid with a quick temper who earned his wings with the Chicago Mob by squeezing a man's head in a vice until his eye sockets popped.

Rosenthal married Geri McGee, former showgirl and erstwhile hooker, two kids, and life in splendid opulence, all the while assuring sceptical authorities that he was but a lowly Stardust employee. He was fronting in reality for men whose names began and ended in vowels, operating skims on gaming profits that could only be guessed at: from modified counters on slots and rigged scales, as far as false casino banks. Professional skimming gangs were employed by the gangsters and casino owners else would simply operate for themselves. Money was there for the taking, and the so-called Eye in the Sky (a roof-mounted TV camera) was seeing nothing. This was a charmed life, the good times were rolling.

But pride comes before a fall, they say, and the charismatic Lefty Rosenthal was ego-ridden. When he should've been laying low, he began to irregularly host an eponymous chat show on local TV, first from a studio, then moving to the Stardust itself. Jill St. John, Frank Sinatra and O.J. Simpson were all guests. But behind the smiles Geri had taken to drugs and booze with an almost religious fervour, she rejected the children she had with her then husband, and, to cap it all, the by now antagonistic Spilotro had come sniffing. And all the time the FBI had the town wired for sound. The fallout from the elaborate internecine strife left a string of brutal murders, six Mob bosses gaoled for life, and Rosenthal exiled from his beloved city.

Pileggi, author of New York Mob expose Wiseguy (basis for Scorsese's monumental Goodfellas; this book is getting the same treatment) tells much of the story through Rosenthal himself. Now living out his years quietly in Boca Raton, he is banned in the so-called "Black Book" from ever entering a casino again. Many of the principals get to speak for themselves - the book is nothing if not authentically voiced - even if, for obvious reasons, two of the key players are silent.

This is an intoxicating epic with a Shakespearean sweep. Kings bestow authority to underlings; power and money corrupt. Like Wiseguy, the sense of doom and disaster is palpable from the outset - Rosenthal was arrogant, too sure of his Teflon-persona; the diminutive, sadistic Spilotro a firecracker on a short fuse. Tears before bedtime, then, and precious little evidence of the love and honour the book's subtitle promises.