The Gamblers

Britain''s foremost writer on crime turns to the disappearance of Lord Lucan. The basis of the upcoming ITV drama, Lucan, starring Rory Kinnear and Christopher Eccleston

For over thirty years, John Pearson has provided us with literary exposures of some of the most enigmatic people and underground organisations of our modern world. The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the centre of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set: the Clermont Club''s eccentric founder John Aspinall; Dominic Elwes, who was to betray the Set''s code of silence; the socialite owner of Annabel''s, Mark Birley; the womanising, multi millionaire James Goldsmith; and the infamous Lord ''Lucky'' Lucan.

At the heart of the Set lay a belief that risk-takers are the people who make civilisation tick.Cruel, heartless and snobbish, they gambled with their fortunes and kept a stiff upper lip when they lost.This and a loyalty to each other that transcended everything else enabled them to rise above crises such as the long affair between Birley''s wife and James Goldsmith, and the facial mutilation of the Birley''s son by one of Aspinall''s tigers.Pearson revels in the charisma, charm and wit of these dastardly but debonair millionaires, and reveals how their code led to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.