Never Enough

Biz! Booze! Broads! It's difficult to envision the sort of trashy story lines that made The Carpetbaggers and Stiletto such memorable hits getting any sleazier, but this nuanceless book achieves the impossible. The fourth in the Forge line (The Secret; The Predators; Never Leave Me) of posthumously published Robbins novels (Robbins died in 1997) finished by "a carefully selected writer" follows the story of four boyhood pals from dead-end 1970s New Jersey who recreationally beat a local loser to death one drunken Saturday night. The ringleader, a "cheat" named David Shea, gets do-gooder friend Cole Jennings to take the fall for him. The novel meanders aimlessly through the subsequent maturation of Dave into a scheming inside trader and Cole, who served three years' probation for involuntary manslaughter, into a well-meaning but weak-willed lawyer; the two team up to run crooked investment deals while pursuing leisurely wife-swapping and generally screwing everything in sight. While Cole and his wife, Emily, manage to weather the storms of such a lifestyle, Dave runs through several wives, one of whom he lands in prison, another of whom he pimps to lure shady Chinese investment capital. While there is just enough trace evidence of the original author's love of business scams in the plot (including Dave gambling on a thinly veiled version of the AOL-Netscape merger), the author's ghost is obliterated by the publisher's ghostwriter. Lines like "Jenna was probably the only girl in the dorm wearing rings in her nipples, and the least sexually experienced on her dorm floor" should have (most) readers dropping the book in disgust, and shoddy editing will discourage the few that remain. Let's hope this will be the last of the post-Robbins Robbins novels; the dead should be allowed to rest in peace. Major ad/promo.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Here is another novel published by the estate of Harold Robbins (who died in 1997) based on story ideas he left behind. Although a ghostwriter penned this latest installment in a long line of novels by the perennially popular writer, this title does manage to remain faithful to Robbins' unique mode of storytelling. Populated almost wholly by powerful, wealthy, oversexed, and, of course, beautiful men and women, this rather formulaic but nevertheless amusing tale follows the exploits of one such male character, David Shea. A high-powered investment banker, Shea manages to go through three wives and many, many illicit affairs as he scratches and claws his way to the top of his field. Outside the twisted life of the main character, though, readers will find a mostly unexciting plot revolving around insider trading, a story line that exists only to tie together all of the trysts, sexual kinks, wife swapping, nymphomania, and other wild activities that exist in the world of a Robbins novel. But his fans will eat it up, and librarians should stand ready. Kathleen Hughes
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