The Gamble - LaVyrle Spencer 3+ overall. My first LaVryle Spencer book. Finely detailed imagery and setting, but the story and romance ran a little too slow for my tastes. The secondary characters (and subtle secondary romance) help make the story. Although it was realistic considering his feelings at the time, the nit picky and idealistic romance reader in me didn't like the sorta-cheating-lite aspect where Scott is still carrying on with his affair with Jubilee (one of his showgirl dancers, who is NOT a villainess and is herself a sympathetic and positive character) long after he and Agatha have met and become friends. I'm a little apprehensive about starting the rave-reviewed "Morning Glory," but I'm hoping that the story and interactions of two misfits thrown together in that book will be more compelling reading for me than this story's underlying tension over prohibition and the temperance movement.