You Make Me Feel So Dead
Eddie Gianelli is a pit boss at the famous Sands Hotel and has become friends with the Rat Pack in Vegas of 1964. Early on in You Make Me Feel So Dead, one of those friends, Frank Sinatra, calls Eddie G. and asks him to show a friend a good time; the friend in question is Elvis Presley, and Eddie’s job also includes keeping Elvis out of trouble (by request of Colonel Tom Parker). This proves more difficult than Eddie imagined when another close friend is accused of murder and Eddie becomes involved in the investigation. Before long, Frank, Dino, and Elvis are helping Eddie track down possible leads and interacting with mobsters and suspicious policemen.
You Make Me Feel So Dead is a fun mystery, and its use of the Rat Pack and other celebrities is thoroughly enjoyable. Randisi takes some of the known facts of the time and works Eddie G. into them flawlessly. The mystery is simple and not hard to follow. There is a lot of emphasis on who is eating what for some reason, but Randisi makes it entirely plausible that the Rat Pack and Elvis somehow become involved in a murder investigation. My only personal issue was I didn’t realize this was the newest in a series, so occasionally I was wondering about stories referenced. But overall I was immersed in the atmosphere of Las Vegas in the ´60s and had a rollicking good time. I’ll be searching out others in the series.
