Books: Big Blonde

BACK STREET—Fannie Hurst—Cosmopolitan ($2.50).

Cincinnatians will take note that for the opening scene of her new book, Fannie Hurst has taken care, as is her custom, to have a letter-perfect local nomenclature— Alms & Doepke, Shillito's, Pogue's, Rook-wood Pottery, Eden Park, Avondale. Her story starts in the '90s, when "Over the Rhine" boasted many a beer-garden and German delicatessen dish. Ray Schmidt was good-looking, a blonde whom drummers, even happily married, invariably tried to lure into sin. Everyone liked her and thought the worst. In a day when beer was plentiful and automobiles...