Sweet Revenge

As popular fashion model Fling is laid to rest--an apparent suicide--her mourners dream of avenging her death, secretly blaming Kingman Beddell, Fling's millionaire husband

Ungainly prose and forced characterizations weaken real-life socialite Rautbord's (coauthor of Girls in High Places ) valiant attempt to write a glitzy commercial novel. Fling, the 24-year-old model behind a popular fragrance and the wife of ruthless business tycoon Kingman Beddall, is dead after a suspicious fall from the roof of the Manhattan high-rise her husband owns. A flashback chronicles Fling's modeling career, Beddall's ascent to the top of his Wall Street empire and the lives of the women Beddall has brutally used along the way. As Beddall's ego carries him further into debt with a dangerous Japanese lender, Fling becomes the innocent victim of his dirty dealings. With the descriptions of glamorous parties, yachts, mansions and shopping sprees and some lively minor characters, Rautbord is on the right track, but the novel remains inert, overwhelmed by due to stereotypic lly sketched main characters, predictable plot twists, endless name-dropping and cataloguing of brands and labels. the narrative re mains inert. 50,000 first printing; Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Chicago socialite Rautbord (coauthor of Girls in High Places, 1987) goes solo--and name brands and bodies drop as rivals, wives, and mistresses of an odious conglomerateur chase each other from Park Avenue to Paris, pausing only for the occasional kinky sex act. Kingman Beddall is the better-looking but still thoroughly Trumpish monster at the center of this overlong, tongue-in-chic romp through the high life of a cosmetic and airline tycoon and his loves. Mr. Beddall, n‚ Carney Eball, who shed his aristocratic first wife to make a trophy of Fling, a six-foot tall supermodel who is very, very similar to Mrs. Mick Jagger, presides over an about-to-unravel business and pleasure empire from his offices in the world's tallest building. Beddall, who says he's a high-class Canadian but who really is just another peckerwood, has mortgaged himself to the gills to buy a failing airline and has made powerful enemies in the process. The second Mrs. Beddall, whose ``suicide'' opens the story, is left to amuse herself as best she can while hubby hits the money-lending circuits and cavorts with his longtime manicuring mistress. Fling's amusements pretty much boil down to shopping with her best chum, a transvestite baroness, saving the baby seals, and reading to the elderly. While the Beddalls shop and bank, New York detective Buffalo Marchetti goes digging into Kingman's unsavory past; the manicurist mistress becomes unhinged; the transvestite baroness provides his husband with an heir; the Beddalls' daughter's weight goes up and down; and the Japanese lurk in the winds. The froth flops. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kingman Beddell, flamboyant millionaire with a murky past, abandons his Southern aristocrat wife and tawdry mistress to marry Fling, a naive supermodel who truly loves the charismatic lout. Fling's face zooms Kingman's cosmetic company to the top. Freddie, her makeup man and best friend, becomes Countess Fredericka, wife of the richest man in Europe. Kingman's ex-wife and ex-mistress have nervous breakdowns and become best friends. Kingman buys everything in sight, building an empire on cooked books, ego, and, with tragic consequences, credit from yakuza money lenders. Yes, the characters are caricatures and the plot farfetched. Who cares? This quick-paced, glitzy novel--spiced with hints of kinky sex, framed by the tension of a suspicious suicide--is just plain fun. Patrons looking for good summer reading will eat it up. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/92.
- Donna L. Schulman, Cornell Univ. Libs., New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.