With 190 million copies of her books sold in more than 40 countries, Jackie Collins is one of the world's top-selling writers. In a series of sensational bestsellers that began with The World Is Full of Married Men, she has blown the lid off Hollywood lives and loves. All of her fifteen novels have been New York Times bestsellers, and not one has ever been out of print. Many of her books have been made into movies or television miniseries, including the international sensation Hollywood Wives and the famous Santangelo novels: Chances, Lucky, and Lady Boss. Ms. Collins lives in Los Angeles, California. Her hobbies include photography, soul music, and exploring exotic locations to use as material for future books.
Jackie's back, and she's got Lucky Santangelo in tow. In their fourth outing together, Lucky finds herself up against nasty Donna Landesman, a rival set on destroying her.
Straight-from-the-hip dialogue, designer clothing and gangsters are all reliably in place in Collins's fourth novel to feature the Santangelo family, particularly Lucky, who now heads a Hollywood studio. In previous exploits, this multitalented heroine has been married three times, built Vegas hotels, run a shipping empire and killed for revenge (as one character comments, "she's had quite a life"). Along the way, she's made her share of enemies, not least of whom is Donna Landsman‘formerly Donatella Bonnatti‘who here stages a hostile takeover of Panther Studios, has Santangelo patriarch Gino shot and makes it appear as though Lucky's beloved husband, Lennie Golden, is killed on location in Corsica following a night's indiscretion. Mourning does not become Lucky, however, and all too soon she's involving herself with chauvinistic director Alex Woods (he of the "smile like a crocodile‘wide, captivating, and ultimately deadly") even as Lennie is imprisoned in a Sicilian cave. When Lucky learns what she needs to know, however, the novel's subtitle comes into play, brutally. Collins's dialogue strains belief ("Ohmigod! she gasped, clinging to Nona. "Ohmigod! No! No! NOOO!"), and she can express scarcely a sentence, a sentiment or a plot spin without resorting to cliché. As a vision of Hollywood and the mob, this novel is utterly outclassed by Mario Puzo's The Last Don. But its very lack of class and those very clichés make this an easy, nasty read, just the qualities that have previously pushed Collins to the top of the charts and will likely do so again. (Feb.)
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