DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL
Jackie Collins
St. Martin’s Press
Fiction
Hardcover: 0312341792
Paperback: 9780312937096

• Read an Excerpt

There are a few irrefutable facts that you can count on in this life. There will always be traffic when you need to be somewhere. The minute you change lines, the one you left will start moving. And a new Jackie Collins book is always a nonstop, sexy, roller coaster ride, tailor-made for the dog days of summer. DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL is the 25th scintillating novel from Collins and the fifth in the Lucky Santangelo series, the first since 1999’s DANGEROUS KISS.   

The former Mafia “donne” turned Hollywood movie studio mogul, and now real estate developer, is back with a vengeance. Raised in a powerful family mired in organized crime, Lucky and her father made the conscious choice to follow the straight and narrow and invest in legitimate businesses. From then on, she lived up to her name, but not without some painful pitfalls along the way. And it seems that willful daughter Max is cut from the same cloth. Planning a new luxury resort in Las Vegas and organizing a birthday party for Gino, her elderly father and patriarch of the Santangelo family --- as well as being a wife to movie producer Lennie and keeping tabs on rebellious daughter Max --- doesn’t leave our heroine with much downtime. Still, she manages to keep all these different engines gunning at full throttle.

Lucky has given up long ago running Panther Studios and is now refocusing her attention on building the luxury resort in Las Vegas called the Keys. But someone is out to thwart her --- possibly even kill her. Anthony Bonar, egomaniacal womanizer and cold-hearted killer, would love nothing more than to see Lucky’s Las Vegas dream implode like the old MGM Grand, and he’ll do anything to see that it does. Failed actor and spoiled heir Henry Whitfield-Simmons has always hated Lucky with a passion, blaming her for his non-start career. Meanwhile, prickly director Alex Woods has always harbored an unrequited desire for Lucky but knows that she will always remain faithful to her husband --- that is, as long as he’s in the picture. And someone keeps leaving mysterious notes in her mailbox with the ominous words “drop dead beautiful.” All signs point to danger for Lucky.

Lucky is not alone in her whirlwind lifestyle. (As always, the subplots in Collins’s novels are just as rollicking as the main storyline). Her friend, mega-star Venus Maria, is also busy trying to keep her boy-toy actor boyfriend satisfied as well as keep her name in the papers and on the marquees. And Max is being wooed by an online suitor who keeps pressing for a face-to-face meeting. Anthony’s long-suffering wife, Irma, has decided to take matters into her own hands and embarks on an affair with her sexy gardener. Alex Woods struggles with his secret affection for Lucky and his headstrong lawyer girlfriend, Ling. Henry wants to even the score with Lucky for robbing him of his career. Everyone in the novel has something to prove and someone to get back at, which provides the perfect fodder for a big, juicy revenge story, served up Jackie Collins-style.  

DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL marks Collins’s 25th entry in a genre she helped to refine and raise to new heights. How fitting that this silver-anniversary publication celebrates her most popular character, a woman who lives by her wits but knows how to use her sexuality in equal measure. This is one author who knows her audience and doesn’t disappoint. Each storyline is equally engrossing, which is a rarity, and zips the reader along through the ins and outs of big money dealings and high-stakes showdowns. What more could one want from a summer read?

   --- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller

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