The story of the ice-bound soul of Frank Kane, orphan, bastard, Casanova, and king of the gambling ring, told largely in first-person flashbacks. Though lusty and far from squeamish, as an indictment of society this does not compare in depth or power with Knock On Any Door or the Studs Lonigan books for example. Moreover, the ""interludes"" between the flashbacks, in which (in all too literary dialogue) Kane's still loyal childhood friends discuss their feelings about him, are jarring- and the author's ear for dialects is not acute. Nevertheless, as a story of big-city organized gambling they don't come any more thrilling, and the author almost succeeds, if not quite, in making believable the charm and brilliance of a man who denied his better instincts until it was too late.