GUILLOTINE

Fair stood the wind for France at the end of Tricolour, Mark Logan's first installment in the Nick Minnett series, and cliches clash just as furiously in Guillotine, which winds up with banker Nick surviving the French Terror, befriending General Bonaparte and giving his career a shove upward, and also about to become the wealthiest man in Europe--should he win the banking war back home in England. Nick is still married to savagely sexy Lady Caroline but is also bedhopping in Paris between the lopping-off of heads, including the beauteous Manon Roland's. But let him explain (as he does to boyish but beddable Honorine): "". . . my wife and I are estranged, and I am seeking a divorce. I shall not marry again, because I already consider myself married to Anne Yealm. You I honor and respect; I have always done so. In many ways I love you. I could hardly do otherwise, after what we have shared, in Paris, in Nantes. . . . It would give me very great pleasure, in every sense of the word, to be able to offer you my protection for the rest of your life."" ""Oh, yes,"" Honorine says, ""you are virile enough for both of us."" But, he soon wonders, what of Aurora? and Elena?--some of the most magnificent bodies in the world! And now, high steams the compost for volume three. . . .