November 10, 2003
Faithful Hollywood Wives: The New Generation
(2001) fans will flock to Collins's latest Tinseltown soap opera, which isn't a sequel but a rehash—after all, who can tire of gorgeous, transposable, ambitious, sex-driven jet-setters whose main problems are which hunk to bed and which gown to wear to what party? In Cannes, emerging English actress Shelby Cheney (in a "Badgley Mishka lace gown cut down to Cuba") is looking for a future Oscar nomination, while her husband, matinee idol Linc Blackwood, is looking like he might jump off the wagon. Hot, bitchy Lola Sanchez ("the
sexy superstar of the new millennium") is scheming to have Linc—who doesn't recognize her as the teenage virgin he once callously deflowered—as her next leading man so she can avenge her wounded pride and the botched abortion that left her unable to bear children. And 19-year-old writer/director prodigy Cat Harrison is restless because her hottie Australian musician husband, Jump Jagger, is halfway around the world. Unbeknownst to these dazzling divas, things are about to go south. On a whim, Cat jets to Australia and catches Jump in bed with another woman. Looking to recapture the ecstasy she had with bad boy film director Tony Alvarez, Lola dumps her boring ex-tennis-pro hubby. Leaving Shelby in L.A., boozy Linc skips off to New York to co-star with Lola. Jam-packed with glamorous characters as believable as paper dolls and situations as familiar and credible as in any Collins classic, the novel catapults into bloody tragedy—and, later, of course, eternal happiness, as Collins once again delivers a patented Pollyanna ending. Agent, Morton Janklow.