SING FOR A PENNY

I was disappointed in this. I liked Gamble's Hundred; I liked Bugles Blow No More. Perhaps it is that a story of a self-made man, in himself a character for whom one can have small respect and no liking, set against the unpicturesque post carpet-bagger days, when the South (the setting is again Tidewater Virginia -- Richmond) is beginning to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, lacks the appeal of the Colonial and the Civil War days. This book has more appeal for men than for women, with its involved manipulations of shady finance, steps in pursuit of an ignoble purpose of revenge. The romance has a checkered progress, and at the close even the girl comes out with none too clear a slate. Well-done, but not pleasant reading.