THE MASTER MECHANIC

More gambling-milieu vulgarity from the author of The Junketeers (1977). Tony Vitale, in Steubenville, Ohio, during the Depression, doesn't want to grow up and go into the mills--so when he meets a legendary dice ""mechanic,"" he's ready and eager to learn all the virtuoso tricks of dice-switching. Soon Tony is becoming a master of his craft, working for small joints in Steubenville till he crosses a Mob man: Tony kills him (or so he thinks) and must blow town. He works his way up through Chicago, is hired to move to New York's Park Avenue gambling houses, sets up new gambling hotels in Havana, and winds up as a master mechanic in Vegas, setting the odds and cleaning up the action for the biggest casinos as a super expert. At last he falls for a ravishing girlfriend of a Mob leader. They run off to Reno to get married, then to Cuba to set up an independent gambling action for themselves. But Castro hits Havana and Tony makes the worst gamble of his life, trying to land a plane in a fog. . . . The gambling has its fascination, but any novel that begins ""She had the sweetest, tightest little ass he'd seen in a long time"" isn't going to please readers looking for a modicum of style, class, or character.