Two committed, high-achieving parents

My father grew up poor in Brooklyn, New York, and educationally his options were very limited. All credit to him that he became an electrical engineer – helping patent devices for use in medical procedures – but he dreamed of doing much more. So, although married with three children, he applied to and was accepted for medical school in Miami, meaning that our whole family had to up sticks from New Jersey. I was 14 when he qualified, at which point we moved back north. But then, not to be outdone, my mom, who’d had very little schooling, decided she would take a law degree, eventually going on to practise for a while. Education and aspiration meant everything to my parents and, accordingly, they had very high hopes for their three sons. It had to be straight-A grades all the way.

The expectation that I’d be high-achieving, too

It was a house rule that, in order to get to watch TV, we boys had to get through two books each per week. Dad was flexible about genres but there was no scamming him: he’d interview us about whatever we had chosen, to make sure we’d read it properly. That could well have made me hate reading but, in fact, I developed an enduring love of books. So imagine this: there’s my older brother, who got a law degree but is now in medical school; and there’s my younger one, who was a tax lawyer but is now a liver-and-kidney-transplant surgeon; and then there’s me, a Harvard graduate who tells his parents, “I want to be a writer.” They were less than overjoyed. “You can give it a year,” my dad said, “but if there’s no serious progress within that time…”

Serving a thorough apprenticeship

I wrote nine novels within an 18-month period, none of which saw publication. There followed a further six that were published but didn’t set the world alight. Then, on my 16th title, it was as if I finally found my own voice… and, significantly, it was in non-fiction. The tipping point was in realising the lifestyle I was leading was actually more interesting than the fictional ones I was making up. [Mezrich, who describes himself as having been an unsuccessful gambler all his adult life, based his breakthrough title, Bringing Down the House, on the exploits of six Massachusetts students who devised a way of beating the system at casinos in Las Vegas.] Looking back, it was a no-brainer that the book should do well, but it came out with zero expectations. So to find myself on the New York Times bestseller list not just for one week but for 59… suddenly, my dad stopped mentioning grad school.

Finally settling down myself

Writers are supposed to be poor and miserable, so to be one without being those things is an amazing gift. Five years ago, Kevin Spacey saw an article I’d written about Bringing Down the House and invited me out to LA to meet him. The upshot is not just the movie of that book, newly released in the US, but options he’s taken out on two others, Ugly Americans and my latest, Rigged [the true story of a young Ivy Leaguer in the oil industry]. It’s an exciting world, but you need stability to function in it long-term. On book tours or at signings now, someone always asks me, “You had this amazing lifestyle but recently got married. How has that changed things?” And I tell them, “Well, I still accept invites to the Playboy Mansion, but no longer stay overnight.”

Rigged is published on February 18. The film 21, based on Bringing Down the House, is released in the UK on April 11

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