This is a novel for readers who love bridge.

It is a novel for readers who hate bridge.

It is a a novel for readers who don't know the difference between a finesse and a five-card major and couldn't care less. You don't have to know bridge to be fascinated by the people in this book, who have gathered at a major tournament to prove that they can beat each other's brains out.

They play big-time duplicate for many reasons. To some, it is a business. To others it is a drug, or a way of acting out fantasies, or a legal substitute for mayhem and manslaughter, or a reason for staying alive.

Richard Powell, author of The Philadelphian; Pioneer, Go Home!; I Take This Land; Don Quixote, U.S.A.; and other novels, began playing tournament duplicate for still another reason. He found that it provided a unique laboratory for the study of human nature. Here is the result of his lab work: human nature as it comes boiling out of the Springs Nationals of the American Contract Bridge League.