Books: Sweet Smell of Success

POOR NO MORE (706 pp.)—Robert Ruark—Holt ($5.95).

Craig Price, the financier hero of Robert Ruark's new novel, makes such a point of drinking, uttering menaces, shooting lions and helling about with women, that one suspects him of wearing a toupee—all that chest hair can't be real. At any rate, he is a standard literary article —the poor boy who gouges his way to wealth. The author's account of the gouging has its moments, but doggedly lumped together, they become hours.

It is not long before the reader is benumbed and desperate, like a man...