Finney’s 1953 “caper” novel is dated in its narrative style, and its depiction of four college students planning and carrying out the robbery of a Reno casino never really catches fire. In fact, it is best read as a coming of age story of the narrator, Al, who brings his girlfriend Tina into the plan--he has to; she comes up with the idea that gets them undetected into Reno. None of the other characters are particularly well fleshed-out. Their plan to rob Harold’s Club (a real casino in Reno, since closed and torn down) requires a lot of work up front, but since Finney wants to save the surprise of how they actually accomplish it for later in the novel, the descriptions of their preparation are just teasers. A more modern telling of the story would expose us to the whole plan beforehand, and then let us watch how the characters cope as small parts of it go awry. In this case, the main interest occurs after the robbery takes place. As usual for Finney, the setting is quite good, and he succeeds in evoking early 1950s Reno quite well. This was made into a movie with a plot, based on the description on imdb.com, that seems to have been thoroughly revamped. ( )