James patterson

Did James Patterson and MrBeast really write their book?

For Spectator readers not familiar with the cultural figure known as MrBeast, his real name is Jimmy Donaldson and he is best known for taking over YouTube and making himself a multi-millionaire in the process. And now his work can be discovered in a literary, rather than streaming, sphere. It has been announced that MrBeast will be collaborating with the bestselling thriller writer James Patterson to publish a novel entitled The Most Dangerous Games in September. It does not, in truth, sound like the stuff of high literature, or even particularly distinguished page-turning trash. The plot synopsis suggests that “In a world on the brink of collapse, one hundred players face off in a ruthless, high‑stakes competition with everything on the line. The reward?

MrBeast

The enigma of Tiger Woods

From our UK edition

The aim of this book is straightforward enough: a study of the Tiger Slam, the incredible 2000-01 season when Tiger Woods held the Masters, the US Open, the Open and the PGA championship all at the same time. It’s the Tiger Slam rather than the Grand Slam because purists will argue that technically (purists always argue ‘technically’) Woods did not win all four trophies in the same year: he took the British and US Opens and the PGA in 2000 and added the Masters in April 2001. Whatever. The fact remains that Woods is the only player ever to hold all four titles simultaneously. Given how transient form on the golf course is, he is likely to be the only one who will ever do so.

What Really Happens in Vegas doesn’t tell you what really happens in Vegas

Many magicians have passed through Las Vegas since its inception somewhere around the early 1940s: David Copperfield, Penn and Teller, Criss Angel. But possibly its most renowned, yet least acclaimed, trickster was a woman named Gloria Dea.   Dea performed traditional magic — the sleight of hand stuff — but she had a specialty in billiard ball manipulation, tossing the balls so that they seem to multiply and then disappear. A prodigy, you could say — and one of the first magicians, let alone a female one, to set foot on the Strip. In 1941, Dea, who was born Gloria Metzner in Oakland, California, appeared at the Round-Up Room at the El Rancho Vegas. She was not yet twenty years old. Dea lasted a year before Hollywood recruited her into D-movies.

seal patterson vegas

Jeffrey Epstein really was a streak of slime

From our UK edition

Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself or was he murdered — and frankly who cares? Actually, having watched the four-part Netflix series — Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich — about his secretive, sordid life, I care very much. Sure, his squalid death in jail, apparently from suicide while awaiting trial for numerous sex crimes, was thoroughly deserved. But justice would have been far better served if this noisome creep had spent the rest of his days rotting in prison, deprived for ever of all sexual activity save the involuntary variety provided in the showers whenever he dropped the soap. I hadn’t expected to respond quite this viscerally to the Epstein tale. Indeed, before I watched the documentary I was inclined to think that perhaps the nefariousness had been overdone.