MALIBU

by Pat Booth ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1990

Typical Booth (Beverly Hills, 1989; The Sisters, 1987; Palm Beach, 1985): a crude, overblown, awkwardly written, and unintentionally hilarious Hollywood novel. ""It's like the edge of the world here. . .It's so near to infinite space. You feel you're part of the universe."" We're not talking Mt. Everest here, or the Sahara desert, but the beach at Malibu. There, photojournalist Pat Parker arrives fresh from New York with an introduction from the dying Robert Mapplethorpe to famous nature-photographer and environmentalist Ben Alabama. She wants to do serious work, but instead ends up snapping away for New Celebrity magazine, run by that terror of an editor, the psychopathic Brit Emma Guiness. Pat is soon in lust with another Alabama admirer, the sultry, James Dean-like star Tony Valentine (""she leaped from the cliffs into the boiling sea of her orgasm"")--but a tiff drives him into the arms of starlet Melissa Wayne, and Pat into the embrace of Cosmos Studios head, Dick Latham (""the richest, randiest man in America""). The plot then thickens--or congeals. Latham wants to despoil Ben Alabama's beloved Santa Monica Mountains by building a new movie studio there; the crazed Emma Guiness takes advantage of the rivalry between the two men to kill Alabama, frame Latham for the murder and blackmail him into letting her head Cosmos Studios. In the end, though, all is finally well--Latham thwarts Guiness; Guiness commits suicide; Pat and Tony Valentine get back together; and, as an extra fillip, it turns out that Dick Latham is Tony's long-lost father. Nothing here but silliness and sleaze.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1990

Categories: FICTION