Instead of writing about Princess Diana, Chris Bohjalian opted for her Vegas impersonator

On the Shelf The Princess of Las Vegas By Chris Bohjalian Doubleday: 400 pages, $29 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. Chris Bohjalian, whose 25th novel, “The Princess of Las Vegas,” was released on Tuesday, grew up in New York State, went to college in Massachusetts and lives year-round in Vermont, but this morning, as we talk via videoconference, he’s discussing Las Vegas. The “Princess” of the title is Crissy Dowling, a Princess Diana tribute performer, who lives and works at Las Vegas’ fictional Buckingham Palace Casino. How ironic is it that Las Vegas has both a mob museum and a Diana museum?” In his early drafts of “Princess,” the danger was connected to Russia’s oligarchs and mob, but after Putin invaded Ukraine, says Bohjalian, “all of a sudden the Russian oligarch jokes didn’t seem funny to me.” Instead, he decided to set the book in a very specific moment in time, just before Queen Elizabeth II died and during the FTX cryptocurrency scandal. Dread is the rocket fuel that makes the engine work.” Very few people would associate dread with a man who has built such a successful career as a novelist that he’s had three books turned into films, one turned into a hit TV show and two more in the development pipeline, including 2022’s bestselling “The Lioness.” But Chris Bohjalian is, forgive the expression, an open book when it comes to how his own emotions and experiences affect his projects.