The Golden Touch
$2.50
By
RANDOM HOUSF
MIKE SEABROOK, farm boy, becomes business titan, forces his way into old firm, falls in love with partner’s wife, gambles in aeroplane stocks, loses because he is in hospital with pneumonia, gambles with customers’ money, loses again because he is in hospital with gunshot wound, marries partner’s widow. At the end he says, ‘I’m damned if anyone is going to keep Mike Seabrook in mothballs,’ suggesting that we shall hear more ot him.
This is old stuff, though told with spirit. The scenes are Wall Street offices, the Stock Exchange, private yachts, night clubs, dives, hamburger joints, swell hotels, with an episode in Abyssinia and on a German commerce raider for variety. The characters, including the hero, are types: folksy old mother, philosophic Jew, office stenographer, customers’ men, stockbrokers, business magnates, glamour girls, debutantes, barkeepers, toughs. Though Mike Seabrook is a big crook, he is only a lovable country boy at heart, afraid of his little mother. It all seems too, too familiar. The upshot: a bad taste in the mouth — which may or may not be what was intended. R. M. G.