The women whose husbands rule 1980s Hollywood are the subject of Jackie Collins’s Hollywood Wives.
Some of the wives are powers behind their men’s thrones; other are just mindless bodies. Instead of being real people, the wives are graphic novel memes.
A newly-wed couple enter this sexually charged atmosphere. Buddy believes the myth of instant Hollywood fame and fortune. He’s ready to do whatever it takes to be a star.
Angel knows little of movies or stardom. She just wants to make a home with Buddy and their baby.
Wives comes very close to being an all-sex novel on the model of the worst of Harold Robbins and Judith Krantz.
We really didn’t need another novel proving other people’s sex lives are more exciting than our own.
Hollywood Wives is saved—barely—by a secondary story that’s more interesting than the wives.
A young man is driving across the country murdering women as he goes. The victims are mainly addicts and hookers whose disappearances cause scarcely a ripple.
The killer is being trailed by a cop obsessed with finding and stopping him—and with figuring out what set off his murder spree.
Collins finally ties the killer to the wives, but the damage is already done.
Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins
Simon and Schuster. 1983. 510 p.
1983 bestseller #9. My grade: D
©2019 Linda G. Aragoni
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