IT ONLY HURTS A MINUTE

This is ALL -literally ALL- about the games people play, poker, blackjack, craps, the horses, Jai Alai and in case you're in any doubt, the games win, the people lose. Quite a bit of it was in Mankiewicz' first book, See How They Run (1951) and he came on even stronger in the Harper Prize Novel of 1955, Trial. Both of those books had stories, and Mankiewicz was never much on character. Here all you'll know about Lew White is that he's a compulsive gambler-- he's only alive at the table and he's not much more animate than the cellulose hundred dollar chip with which he begins and ends the book. In between, with a girl called Lisa Fortune, he builds it up to over $60,000 during a long weekend at the track and at the tables. When Lisa drifts off, he loses it all. She's just a winner's girl, but he finally realizes she's not Lady Luck. Luck-- well that's just one of those inner intuitions which can beat any probability statistic, any system and any man... The house is playing this one to win and there's no question that it has quite a hook. But as Lew will tell you there's always an ""If and if not and either and or"" and whether and almost, there's ""always almost."" And in our line, maybe. In any case, it's a fast track all the way.