THE HARDER THEY FALL

A book which will build on the trick success of What Makes Sammy Run? to approach big sales figures. A smashing, brutal montage of all types of personalities, incidents pertaining to the professional prize ring. Told by money-hungry, word-drunk press agent Ed Lewis, who dreams of justifying his absorption in the sport by writing a play about it, this chronicles the building up of a fighter, El Toro, from the Argentine. ""Making with the adjectives"" for promoter Latka, Lewis is commissioned to publicize El Toro, and lining up phony fights, news comment, and unlimited dirty business, Lewis and Latka's henchmen get El Toro into the big time. But El Toro, simple, honest, eventually learns the truth, not only about his faked successes, but also about Ruby, Latka's wife, in whom he had believed. In his defeat and the doublecross of his earnings, he is forced into the tragic world of outworn fighters, while Lewis, having alienated the girl he loves, learns that he too is forever committed to the venal fraternity he thought he could lick. A harshly mirrored, pitilessly portrayed picture of the world of money-crazy, tawdry, monstrous figures, of the effects of insatiable greed, of unpunished larceny, of heartless exploitation. A hard-socking shocker that continues the expert delineation of heels begun in the earlier novel and outs to a deeper level. A book for men, almost entirely.