The Gamblers: Aspinall, Goldsmith and the Murder of Lord Lucan torrent

The Gamblers: John Aspinall, James Goldsmith and the Murder of Lord Lucan - John Pearson [epub]

In the tradition of “true crime” books, The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the center of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set including the infamous Lord Lucan who disappeared following the murder of his children’s nanny.

During the 1950s, Aspinall plied a meagre trade behind London's Oxford Street as an illicit backstreet bookie. Yet, within a decade, he had moved over to Mayfair to found the most exclusive - and profitable - gaming rooms in Europe. The leap in Aspinall's status lies in the Clermont Club's membership, the most valued members being the British aristocracy, preferably rich and so addicted to gambling that, like the trustee Ian Maxwell Scott, they could take a bet on two drops of rain running down a window pane.

Through the 1960s, Aspinall, Goldsmith and the other owners of the Clermont acted as Pied Pipers of gambling. And, in order to encourage gullible punters to keep trying their luck, the club hedged its bets. It employed "House" players, usually old Etonians paid £10 a week, to ply the upper-class clientèle with drink and keep them playing until they were totally cleaned out. One of the heaviest losers was "Lucky" Lord Lucan, a dim reactionary whose favourite reading in the early hours after retiring from the tables was Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Pearson cleverly switches from a group biography into a murder mystery and, because he concentrates on Lucan's disappearance, rather than the more well-known facts about the killing of the nanny in the Belgravia basement, he entices the reader into a whodunnit. The gripping depiction of this amoral hierarchy sets John Pearson's book apart from others on the Lucan case.

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Century (August 23, 2005)