This is the second book I've read by Megan Abbott, and she can go ahead and sign me up as member of her fan club. 
 Set back in the good old days when people still smoked and took a shot a rye every twenty minutes, the unnamed narrator is a young woman who is keeping the books for a small time shady night club. After she helps the owners do some creative Enron-style accounting, she comes to the attention of Gloria Denton. 
 Gloria is an aging but gorgeous woman who helps manage the rackets in town, and she takes the young bookkeeper under her wing. Soon the narrator is hanging out in casinos, night clubs, and horse racing tracks to pick-up money and perform various other errands for Gloria. Everything is going well until the young lady falls for the exact wrong guy in the form of small time gambler and chronic loser Vic. 
 This is old school noir with a great feminine twist on it. Abbott's prose absolutely sings, and the relationships she builds between the narrator and Gloria and Vic are complex and intense. The story that unfolds because of them is first rate.