Gambler as Hero

DARK HAZARD-W. R. Burnett-Harper ($2.50).

U. S. readers do not always agree with U S. critics. Though critics rate Author William Riley Burnett a little higher than the Satevepost high-school of fiction, they have not given him much of a hand. But readers, 90% of whom want entertainment first & last, like his books, find it hard to lay down a Burnett story once they have picked it up. Story-teller pure & simple, Burnett is no axe-grinder, has no bees in his bonnet, unleashes no worrying moral. Not yet nominated for the Hall of Fame, he has thrice been given the accolade of the book clubs. Dark Hazard, his sixth novel, is the September Book-of-the-Month Club choice.

Jim Turner had been a denizen of the race tracks, he had once even owned a string of horses himself. But he had said good-by to all that when he married Marg, a small-town Ohio girl of sterner antecedents and conventions than his own. He told himself he was glad to have a $25-a- week job as night clerk in a shabby Chicago hotel, glad to be a respectable married wage-earner. But when he got in a fracas with Gambler Bright from which he emerged with a better-paid job at a dog-racing track in California, Jim thought much better of the future. Marg was anxious, though she tried not to show it. Sure enough, back among his own kith, Jim drifted into his old ways. At first contemptuous of dog-racing, Jim soon caught the fever. One dog in particular struck his fancy--a black greyhound named Dark Hazard. Jim itched to own it, but the claiming price was $5,000. One night Jim made a big killing at roulette, went to sleep thinking that next day he would buy Dark Hazard.

But next day he found Marg had gone back to Ohio, taking all but a few hundred dollars of his winnings. Three years later Jim joined her. They made a reconciliation of sorts, and Jim settled down again, this time to a job at a newsstand. Then one day he saw Dark Hazard again, saved him from being destroyed by a vet, brought him home. Marg, who had been getting more respectable with age, finally told him she was going to divorce him, marry the smalltown man she should have married in the first place. Jim and Dark Hazard, both middle-aged now, set off together to seek their further fortune. The Author. William Riley Burnett, never signs his full name or parts it in the middle. Though he says, "I do not consider writing work, but pleasure," he is no slapdash writer and blue-pencils his copy ruthlessly. He rewrote one of his novels, The Giant Swing, three times in ten years, cut it 20,000 words. Before he published his first novel he had laid away in a trunk the mss of five novels, 100 short stories, a play. He cares for no criticism but his wife's. He writes with tremendous speed, at night, on black coffee. Though he looks fat and middle-aged he is really fat and young (33). A rapacious reader, he also likes music and dogs: his wire haired fox-terriers have won blue ribbons; lately he has gone in for greyhounds, which accounts for his giving the dog-track to literature. War Cry, his prize, holds a world's record (one-turn quarter-mile-22 1/5 sec.), runs-like his hero's hero-dog--at a claiming price of $5,000.

Other books: Little Caesar, Iron Man, Saint Johnson.

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