As -- and if -- novels of the prise ring go, this is good, a highpaced, hard-mouthed inside story of the tacties, the shyster manceuvers, the fickleness and the feverish fascinative of the fight game. Here is Shorty, who never found his Champ through years of picking youngsters out of the gutter, Mona, his girl, who liked money better than Shorty; and Steven and Johnny, his two new boys, Steve who only fought to get the money to bring his mother out of Germany, and Johnny, bluff, big-headed, with a killer streak. A convincing, uncompromising job -- with some very low which P.L.'s will not like. For the men.