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SILK AND SATIN by Marcia Wolfson

SILK AND SATIN

By

Pub Date: Nov. 21st, 1986
Publisher: Putnam

Wolfson, whose father is financier Louis (one of America's wealthiest men), is obviously well-versed in the world whereof she writes. Her first novel slides along the well-oiled road of ""Tales of the Rich and Famous"" (down which books like Lace and Hollywood Wives have earlier undulated so successfully), altering the shopworn theme of tracking a clique of college ""chums"" into the present by adding a horrific murder--of which one chum is apparently guilty. Sarah Lawrence College masticated and swallowed Darleen, Joy, Deborah, Aida, and Samantha, all gorgeous, then spewed them out onto the pavements of Manhattan. Twelve years later, Darleen, a goody-two-shoes whose golden heart matches her 40-carat face, has married real-estate's richest heir-apparent, Mark Saunders. When Mark is shoved through the 47th-floor window of his office tower, however, any of the SL grads (who call each other The Sisters) might have a wonderful motive: Mark was cheating on Darleen with each of the others while blackmailing all re their seediest secrets. Detective Sullivan, a cop with a Yale diploma, eventually solves the crime and wins the diamond-drenched hand of Widow Saunders, but not before another real-estate ""Prince"" has been defenene-strated, one of The Sisters has been drugged out, gang-raped, and turned into a 42nd Street hooker, and another, Chinese, has risen to ascendancy in a deadly Chinatown ""triad."" While littered with cliches and laughably hackneyed truisms, the book, some-how, has life, and the solution to the mystery is relatively surprising and ultimately even satisfying. Awful but fun.