SWEET REVENGE

Chicago socialite Rautbord (coauthor of Girls in High Places, 1987) goes solo—and name brands and bodies drop as rivals, wives, and mistresses of an odious conglomerateur chase each other from Park Avenue to Paris, pausing only for the occasional kinky sex act. Kingman Beddall is the better-looking but still thoroughly Trumpish monster at the center of this overlong, tongue-in-chic romp through the high life of a cosmetic and airline tycoon and his loves. Mr. Beddall, nÇ Carney Eball, who shed his aristocratic first wife to make a trophy of Fling, a six-foot tall supermodel who is very, very similar to Mrs. Mick Jagger, presides over an about-to-unravel business and pleasure empire from his offices in the world's tallest building. Beddall, who says he's a high-class Canadian but who really is just another peckerwood, has mortgaged himself to the gills to buy a failing airline and has made powerful enemies in the process. The second Mrs. Beddall, whose ``suicide'' opens the story, is left to amuse herself as best she can while hubby hits the money-lending circuits and cavorts with his longtime manicuring mistress. Fling's amusements pretty much boil down to shopping with her best chum, a transvestite baroness, saving the baby seals, and reading to the elderly. While the Beddalls shop and bank, New York detective Buffalo Marchetti goes digging into Kingman's unsavory past; the manicurist mistress becomes unhinged; the transvestite baroness provides his husband with an heir; the Beddalls' daughter's weight goes up and down; and the Japanese lurk in the winds. The froth flops.