The maven of guilty pleasures is back with a vengeance! Jackie Collins is at her prurient best in
Lethal Seduction, creating a cast of characters as flawed as they can possibly be and still be likable. At the center of the whirlwind is stunning Madison Castelli, introduced previously in Collins's L.A. Connections series. Madison is a no-nonsense journalist who specializes in revealing interviews with the rich and famous. She discovers that her own life is not exactly as it seems when she hires private investigator Kimm Florian to uncover the secrets of her family's past. It turns out Maddy's beloved father didn't make his fortune in investments but rather as a mob hit man. And his targets may have included her two mothers: her real mother, who was murdered when Maddy was just an infant, and Stella, the beautiful, distant woman Maddy always believed to be her mother. Add in a pesky ex-lover who wants her back and a commitment-phobic new boyfriend in photographer Jake Sica, and Maddy's life is spinning out of control.
But she's hardly alone. When Madison's best friend, Grace Kelly look-alike Jamie Nova, finds out that her so-called perfect husband is cheating on her, she will do anything (and anyone) to get back at him. But the most captivating story line is that of bitch supreme Rosarita Falcon, unhappily married to a handsome but unsuccessful soap opera star whose real name is Dick Cockranger. Rosarita is perfectly willing to stoop to murder-for-hire (with her dear old dad pulling the trigger) to get rid of her husband so she can be with Joel Blaine, public sex fanatic and son of billionaire Leon Blaine.
The stories merge in a spectacular crescendo at a Las Vegas prizefight, when a mysterious stranger, Vincent Castle, appears to save Maddy and Jamie from an awkward situation. Fans of Jackie Collins will hope they haven't seen the last of Madison Castelli. --Alison Trinkle
There have been many imitators, but only ever one Jackie Collins.
The iconic British author has been called a “raunchy moralist” by the director Louis Malle and “Hollywood’s own Marcel Proust” by Vanity Fair.
With millions of her books sold in more than forty countries, and with thirty-one New York Times bestsellers to her credit, she is one of the world’s top-selling novelists.
From glamorous Beverly Hills bedrooms to Hollywood move studios; from glittering rock concerts in London to the yachts of Russian billionaires, Jackie Collins chronicled the scandalous lives of the rich, famous, and infamous from the inside looking out.
“I write about real people in disguise,” she once said. “If anything, my characters are toned down—the truth is much more bizarre!”
Her first novel, The World is Full of Married Men, was published in 1968 and established Collins as an author who dared to step where no other female writers had gone before. She followed it year after year with one successful title after another, including Chances, the first installment of a sprawling nine-book saga introducing the street-smart, sexy, and dynamic Lucky Santangelo. The eighties saw Jackie hitting her stride with the seminal blockbuster, Hollywood Wives, as well as Lucky, Hollywood Husbands, and Rock Star. In recent years she kept fans entertained with Poor Little Bitch Girl, The Power Trip, and her final novel, The Santagelos, never wavering on her commitment to take her readers on a “wild ride”!
Six of her novels have been adapted for film or TV and Universal Pictures has recently optioned the Santangelo series with a view to bringing Lucky to the big screen.
Jackie was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the Queen of England in 2013 for her services to literature and charity. When accepting the honor she said to the Queen, “Not bad for a school drop-out”—a revelation capturing her belief that both passion and determination can lead to big dreams coming true.
Jackie Collins lived in Beverly Hills where she had a front row seat to the lives she so accurately captured in her compulsive plotlines. She was a creative force, a trailblazer for women in fiction and in her own words “A kick-ass writer!”