Storming Las Vegas

Huddy's debut book centers on a Cuban man named Jose Vigoa, whose real-life story is a captivating account of how one man managed to bring the city of Las Vegas to its knees in 1998. Narrator Stefan Rudnicki's deep and stern voice is perfectly suited to this true-crime caper. Rudnicki offers a variety of voices and accents for the various dangerous characters that abound, the best of which is certainly the central character himself. A gripping atmosphere is established from the start, with Rudnicki reading with such voracity that it seems as if he actually was there, party to one the largest, yet largely unreported, heists in American history. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 4, 2008
Network producer and onetime Miami Herald columnist Huddy tells a gripping story of greed, violence, theft and public relations. Las Vegas had just launched its new blitz of advertising\x97advancing itself not as \x93Sin City\x94 but as a family-friendly vacation destination\x97when Jose Vigoa (a Cuban-born commando veteran of the Soviet Army) hit town in the late 1990s. Vigoa and a small crew embarked on a violent 16-month crime wave, targeting some of the Strip's most prominent (and, as Vigoa showed, vulnerable) institutions. A 23-year veteran of the Las Vegas Police Force, Lt. John Alamshaw was charged with finding and capturing the men behind the crime spree\x97without allowing the robberies to become national news and spoil Vegas's new image. Huddy traces Vigoa's personal history from his childhood in Castro's Cuba to fighting for the Red Army in Afghanistan, his return to Cuba and eventual resettlement in the United States. Then he chronicles the Cuban's increasingly audacious grabs for Vegas riches and his ultimate sentencing to more than 500 years in prison with no possibility of parole. This debut is a must for true-crime enthusiasts. B&w photos.