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DIARY OF A GROUPIE by Omar Tyree

DIARY OF A GROUPIE

by Omar Tyree

Pub Date: June 17th, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-2867-7
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

A career groupie is hired to use her tried-and-true wiles for revenge on a suspected child molester.

Tyree has fortunately decided to pare things down after the 400-page bloat of his last effort (Leslie, 2002), though that’s about it. One can’t expect to be wowed by the prose after an stiff opening line (“Main Street in Las Vegas, Nevada, was the hottest spot for adult fun and games that America had to offer”), but it’s still impressive just how uninteresting Tyree is able to make his seemingly juicy plot-points. Tyree’s mad, bad, and dangerous It-Girl this time out is Tabitha Knight, the groupie herself, who at the start is escorting an ex-prizefighter to a Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight in Las Vegas. Tabitha is one of several sisters raised in foster homes, most of whom have been having hard times with boyfriends, kids, and jobs—a problem that Tabitha has managed to avoid by sleeping with as many famous/rich/powerful men as possible, getting as much money out of them as possible—and recording all her exploits in her diary. She’s got the boxer on a hook and is successfully angling to get a hot, up-and-coming pro basketballer into her bed when she gets an unwelcome visit from a private investigator. Soon Tabitha finds herself hired and on her way to New York to get some dirt on a famous actor who has apparently molested the daughter of the investigator’s boss. An interchangeable array of men with secrets enter Tabitha’s orbit as the shadowy forces working behind the scenes strive to get their hands on her diaries. Unfortunately, once Tyree moves the action eastward, this already-thin tale becomes even more dangerously stretched, with barely enough steam to limp to its conclusion.

Hard to figure what the point of it all is. Meanwhile, Tyree’s hopelessly schlocky style causes at least a couple of serious embarrassments per page.