In his two earlier novels, "The Sea of Grass" and "The Trees," Conrad Richter has made a solid contribution to the long shelf of Americana; in "Tacey Cromwell" he goes back into the Arizona Territory a half century ago, to find a protagonist in the hennaed sporting-house madam who gives the book its name. Like others of this celebrated sisterhood, Tacey yearns for a husband and social esteem. (p. 6)

Certainly there is material here for a novel of the magnetic West. Mr. Richter has packed his story into a little over 200 pages. He tells it with soundness as well as economy; and yet, for all his careful choice of character and local color, there is something unfulfilled about it, something oddly lifeless. Though the plot is honestly conceived, though it avoids most of the cruder allurements of melodrama, it emerges as a made-to-order pattern, no more moving than...