Insatiable - Hardcover

Kellogg, Marne Davis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385495781 ISBN 13: 9780385495783

Publisher: Doubleday, 2001

Synopsis

A sweeping novel of suspense and intrigue-played out against the glamorous playgrounds of the rich; starring a beautiful and mysterious woman who leaves a path of death and destruction in her wake.

Jacqueline du Fidelio is a portrait painter with an international reputation and a dark secret in her past. Loyal only to her butler, closest friend, and confidant, the snobbish, neurotic, and completely amoral Nigel Weatherby-Smith, Jacqueline is fiercely independent--until it comes to affairs of the heart. Her penchant for toxic romantic involvements draws her to the worst kinds of men-from the rakishly unreliable and very married Ryder McCormick, her mother's former lover who has enthralled her since childhood, to Armand Weil, a debonair, fabulously wealthy art dealer who sweeps her off her feet, promises to take care of her forever, and deserts her at the worst possible moment. Junior Hammond, the sybaritic, obese, and uncultured heir to the Hammond oil fortune, finally succeeds in winning her hand in marriage. But like Jacqueline's other liaisons, the romance is soon wrapped in deadly shadows as members of the Hammond family begin to die in mysterious ways whenever Jacqueline is on the scene.

Is Jacqueline the innocent victim of careless, uncaring men and circumstances beyond her control, or is she a dangerous manipulator, ruthlessly using her lovers to ensure her own survival? Does her apparent fragility actually mask a cold, lethal core, an insatiable need to prove her invulnerability?

Taking readers from the lush hunt country of Virginia to New York City's glamorous art world, from the winter wonderland of Aspen, Colorado to the treacherous mountains of Nepal, Insatiable builds to almost unbearable suspense. It is only in the stunning final pages that we discover the terrible secret that haunts Jacqueline-and may have turned her into a killer.

About this title

About the Author

Marne Davis Kellogg is the author of the acclaimed Lilly Bennett mystery series. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

From the Back Cover

"Insatiable is a fast-moving and very funny story of high crimes and low society, nouveau riche oil people, and international art dealers. This novel puts Marne Davis Kellogg on the map as one of America's premiere suspense writers. Her sharp style and scathing wit are wonderful, and when you've finished Insatiable, you'll wonder where you left your moral compass, or even if you had one. Sexy, irreverent, and wicked. An absolute winner."--Nelson DeMille

From the Inside Flap

ovel of suspense and intrigue-played out against the glamorous playgrounds of the rich; starring a beautiful and mysterious woman who leaves a path of death and destruction in her wake.

Jacqueline du Fidelio is a portrait painter with an international reputation and a dark secret in her past. Loyal only to her butler, closest friend, and confidant, the snobbish, neurotic, and completely amoral Nigel Weatherby-Smith, Jacqueline is fiercely independent--until it comes to affairs of the heart. Her penchant for toxic romantic involvements draws her to the worst kinds of men-from the rakishly unreliable and very married Ryder McCormick, her mother's former lover who has enthralled her since childhood, to Armand Weil, a debonair, fabulously wealthy art dealer who sweeps her off her feet, promises to take care of her forever, and deserts her at the worst possible moment. Junior Hammond, the sybaritic, obese, and uncultured heir to the Hammond oil fortune, finally succeeds in winning her hand in

Reviews

Unbelievable and Unlikable might serve as alternate titles for Kellogg's latest, billed as the start of a new series from the author of the popular Lilly Bennett books (1998's Bad Manners, etc.). But American Jacqueline di Fidelio, a society portrait painter, and her British butler, Nigel Weatherby-Smythe, a former safecracker and convict, would not, from the evidence presented here, appear to have any of the qualities that give series characters longevity: some degree of credulity and at least a bare minimum of empathy. Nigel, a bitchy bisexual who serves as unreliable narrator ("Basically, I'm sexless... I'm truly very happy living vicariously"), is at first amusing as he flaunts his snobbery and hypochondria, but both attitudes quickly grow stale. As for Jackie (or "Madam," as Nigel calls her), she is never convincing in any of her roles: abused daughter of a mad painter; glamorously enigmatic lover of the rich and famous; and finally the accused murderer of rivals, husbands and potential clients. Kellogg's descriptions of the lush life in contemporary Virginia, Paris, Nepal and other haunts of the privileged do have a certain fascination; would that she had spent as much time coloring in her human landscapes. Agent, Nick Ellison. (Jan. 16) Forecast: Readers of Kellogg's Lilly Bennett books might grab enough early copies of this to cause a stir, but disappointment and bad word-of-mouth are almost certain to limit its sales.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kellogg gives her Marshall Lilly Bennett series a breather to introduce something quite different: the adventures of portrait painter and scam artist Jacqueline du Fidelio, as told by her adoring butler, the amoral Nigel Weatherby-Smythe. As the tale begins, Nigel is visiting Jackie in prison, shortly before her scheduled execution. The rest of the book is Nigel's account of how Jackie wound^B up in jail for murder. Kellogg offers readers a double dish of pleasure here: seeing the world through Nigel's neurotic, hysterically funny eyes, on the one hand, and getting to know Jackie, on the other. Readers follow the pair through various adventures, most involving Jackie's ill-chosen lovers. When various members of her latest paramour's family begin to drop dead, suspicion lands squarely on Jackie. Only Nigel remains convinced of her innocence, steadfastly blaming all their troubles on "Madam's unsuitable men." A funny, clever, and original story and the beginning of what may well become a superb series. Jenny McLarin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

THREE YEARS EARLIER

“Who was that?” Madam’s voice came around the corner from her dressing room and sounded hopeful. God knows, we could use a little joy around this house at the moment.

I hung up the phone.

I lacked both the heart and the guts to tell her it was the bank. My paycheck had bounced. Again. What some would call my spinelessness, but which I preferred to regard as amenability, has ceased to concern me. I am what I am. And, in fact, I think it is this ability to be amenable, my willingness to play second fiddle, to hold the towel for the victor or the vanquished, to soldier on — loyal, steadfast, and true — that makes me a good servant. Perhaps even a great one. “Wrong number,” I answered.

It was a perfect country morning. Sunlight filtered through the lacy branches of the dense hardwoods that towered over the house and down the hill. The trees were now mostly bare after a spectacular Virginia autumn and gave a glimpse of the clear, sharp sky. The sun had forced a velvety mist from the heavy dew that blanketed the fields overnight, and the woods beyond, where the ground was wet and cobwebby, thick with fallen leaves. All the night creatures had retired, leaving only an occasional red fox scurrying home to its den, turning his turf over to the few remaining songbirds and our herd of pet white-tailed deer. The mist was bright and patchy. It danced over the meadow and flirted with the trees before vanishing into thin air. Sometimes, especially on silent mornings such as this, I found our forest as magical as that of Titania and Oberon, where little was what it seemed.

Much like our illusory life, filled with phonies of little substance, pursued by others who would go to any extent to join this fake, glittery world. A world where people appear to have unlimited time, money, and happiness. A world of danger and hidden traps ... of silly, vain, reckless flatterers. A world of sophisticated fools. But, I mused — enjoying the moment of quiet as I gathered up Madam’s breakfast tray — they were our fools and their vanity paid our bills. So who was I to judge? And frankly, today, with our finances in the state they’re in, we could use another fool or two.

I watched three of the white-tails — a young stag with furry antlers just budding from his head and two wide-eyed does — tentatively enter the meadow, their black noses shiny, ears and tails twitching, their footprints as distinctive in the dew as if it were snow.

“The deer are here,” I said.

“I can’t imagine what they think they’re going to find to eat until that hay’s delivered — they’ve already inhaled every leaf on the property. Did you get a good price on it?”

“Pretty fair.” See what I mean? We’re down to worrying about the price of hay.

It had been a rough few months. Madam’s mother had died and — in a letter delivered from her lawyers the day after her death — informed Madam that her mother had left the bulk of her estate, which consisted primarily of her gigantic, demented, and wildly overvalued paintings, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This upset Madam so much she locked herself in her room for two days and refused to attend her own mother’s funeral, a massive blow-out at the Musee d’Orsay. I went, just so I could report the details, in case she asked. Which she did the minute I returned to the Place Vauban apartment where her mother had lived and painted for forty years, and where Madam had grown up, the only child of Constanza di Fidelio, one of the Twentieth Century’s most famous painters, and her late husband, Rubirosa.

Constanza was a raving mad, lunatic bitch. She had been cruel and jealous, and, in most people’s opinions, maybe even borderline psychotic. She ran her studio like an old-fashioned opium den where any and every mind-altering substance known to mankind was not only available, but bountiful. People came and went around the clock, eating, sleeping, and fornicating whenever and wherever the urge overtook them. For my Madam, it must have been like growing up in Bedlam, so I didn’t find it at all surprising that now, as an equally famous, much-in-demand portrait artist, she was a little off-beam, a little cockeyed herself. Who wouldn’t be, under the circumstances? And me? I loved her in spite of, because of, her vulnerabilities.

We’d been back stateside, at Madam’s small farm in Middleburg, Virginia, for several weeks, struggling to keep up appearances. She’d counted on more from her mother, but actually, to tell the truth, I myself wasn’t a bit surprised at the mean-spirited inheritance: the Paris studio and a handful of minor works, which — if Madam sold them judiciously — could help bridge the span between what she made and what she spent.

The few works Constanza had previously given her daughter as gifts during their occasional periods of reconciliation, and that hung in our house — the Zodiacs, twelve separate works that when hung together theoretically made up a single piece, although I personally could never figure them out, and Andromeda, a gigantic, ochre-colored mess — were copies. Fakes. Madam had sold the originals before they’d even made it through the front door, spending the money on mortgage payments and gardenias.

We’d been living without a net for quite a while. What we needed was a rich man. She kept herself in tip-top shape but who’s kidding who: time was running out.

“I’ll be out in the studio, Nigel,” she said, entering the bedroom in her work uniform: a loose linen shirt over a Lycra body-stocking — today’s was black — and soft leather ballet slippers.

Madam is what we refer to in England as an “exotic,” with looks that teetered just on this side of good, a coin-toss that had landed in her favor. Her coal-black hair that, but for chance, could have been drab and coarse, was instead thick and wavy, and today, instead of being pulled tightly into a chignon and hidden under a cluster of gardenias, it tumbled in a ponytail mid-way down her back. And her eyes — wide, unreadable, so dark a blue they were almost black — were heavily hooded and slightly tilted. With five seconds more or less gestation, they could have been heavy, lethargic, froggy eyes. Instead, they shone with intelligence and always glittered just a little on this side of danger. Her mouth, full-lipped, always ready to laugh or cry, would have been wrecked by a set of perfect teeth and we would have been robbed of her slightly gap-toothed smile. She was as lush and volatile and alluring as a gypsy.

I’ve never been too clear on where her father, Rubirosa, who died when she was a child, came from. Some days he was portrayed as an Argentinean playboy, others as a Mexican freedom fighter, and still others as a Philippine lumber baron. Whatever he was, he was swarthy and there had been a good deal of money involved. Now all gone, of course, pissed out the window into the Place Vauban by Constanza’s stream of needy lovers.

Little wonder that Madam herself was a keg of nitro that pulsed like an African drum. She was wild and unpredictable, funny and charming, morose and maudlin, bold and direct, timid and withdrawn. The only qualities she had not inherited from her mother, as far as I could tell, were cruelty and vindictiveness. In fact, she was just the opposite: Madam was way too easily manipulated, she had far too much need to be liked and far too little confidence in her own strengths. In my opinion, she was a perfect candidate for Multiple Personality Disorder, but, according to my Family Medical Reference Guide, which I kept with me at all times, she did not exhibit any of the symptoms — fragmentation, delusions, detachment, and so forth. Not yet, anyhow. As it was, she could have been the poster girl for Bipolar Disorder, complete Manic-Depressive lunacy, but of course when she went for her annual physical, she was as normal as pie. I think a little Lithium would have helped her a lot, but then again, it probably would have stolen her talent. So I kept my mouth shut and soldiered on, ready as always to catch her at the fall.

She had been born in France, named Jacqueline in honor of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (later Onassis), and educated from the seventh grade on in America, at an exclusive girls’ boarding school in Virginia. So when she was in America, she was American. In France, French. In Bolivia, Bolivian. And so forth. Of everywhere, and yet, nowhere. A true exotic.

An exotic with all the good humor of a bear with sore toenails. My Madam, who could charm the birds out of the trees if she wanted to, had — as I mentioned — been in a ghastly mood since her mother died and left all her money to the museum. This bad humor was exacerbated by the fact that Madam was locked into a sick affair with a rogue named Ryder McCormick, one of her own late mother’s long-time lovers. Ever since Madam entered puberty, there had been an unrelenting sexual undercurrent between them — dark and forbidden — never satisfied, never consummated until those final, endless days of Constanza’s life when, as she lay on her deathbed, eaten alive by lung cancer, contorted with pain and unable to move, her lover and her daughter surrendered to their passion, fucking each other insatiably right outside her door.

Ryder McCormick, with his bloody good looks and that bloody glass eye that glittered as hard and cold as ice, was bad news. His charm and manners were polished and flawless. He was elegant, graceful, overpowering, and had the sort of domineering effect on men and women that dared them to challenge him because he had no money of his own. He was a sycophant and he was the first to admit it — proud of the fact that he had alwa...

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385495781
• ISBN 13: 9780385495783
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336