Before Jennifer Spencer foolishly decided to take an insider-trading rap for her Wall Street boss, breaking in a new pair of Manolo Blahniks was about the worst discomfort she had known. Now that she's serving three-to-five, though, she has to wear an orange poly-blend jumpsuit and eat with a spork: "This was humiliation, not rehabilitation!" "Debutante," as she is nicknamed, is determined to bust out of the joint, but not before she improves morale by adding colored curtains to the prison cafeteria. The latest effort from the author of 1992's The First Wives Club limps in the early going but evolves into a wildly entertaining tale that, despite occasional mawkishness, has a big heart. (Dutton, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Lock yourself up with it
By Edmund Morris
In the international arena, the first American President to swing a big stick, nearly a century ago, was Theodore Roosevelt. In 700-plus fact-packed pages about the 26th President's White House years, Morris (who made himself a piñata of controversy by injecting a fictional character into Dutch, his 1999 Ronald Reagan biography) drowns in minutiae, right down to the exact times trains arrived.
Morris plunges into both the signature projects (building the Panama Canal, demolishing corporate trusts) and the moments when TR spoke softly: In 1902 he bluffed Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm out of a naval move that could have caused a world war. TR's bustling greatness stands out at such times, but Rex is ultimately too detailed for its own good. (Random House, $35)
Bottom Line: For buffs only
By Mo Hayder
There's an obsessive, violent insomniac on the prowl in south London's Brockwell Park. And that's just our story's hero, Det. Jack Caffery. Short-tempered but swaggeringly sexy, Caffery is making an encore appearance as the Scotch-and smoke-steeped star of Mo Hayder's riveting second crime thriller.
This time Caffery is on the trail of a homicidal pedophile who has vanished into the densely wooded park with his prize, a bleeding and naked boy. Will the park give up its secrets? The detective shakes the trees with all he has—thermal imaging scans, the best lab work in London—as the park becomes a symbol of his own shady past.
Caffery has the seductive smolder of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, and Hayder has a perfect ear for cop jargon and profanity. She expertly plants new hedgerows in Caffery's path at every turn, then plucks away at them leaf by leaf, teasing us with glimpses of sinister truths until all is revealed. (Doubleday, $23.95)
Bottom Line: Mo! Mo! Mo!
An African Childhood
By Alexandra Fuller
When she moved to Africa at age 2, Fuller immediately came down with a fever. She writes that although she was conceived in Africa, she spent her infancy far from it: "I had been started in urban England (like a delicate vegetable started indoors)." She was left with the feeble "constitution of a missionary."
Vivid, insightful and sly, this fascinating memoir recounts Fuller's experience as the daughter of British farmers who settled in southern Africa in the early 1970s, during the height of the Rhodesian civil war. Yet historical strife is merely one challenge facing a family that also grapples with alcoholism, substandard housing and sibling rivalry. With her clipped writing and snakebite wit, Fuller herself comes across like the Australian boarder who makes a brief appearance in the book: "She's crisp and sharp-sweet," Fuller writes, "like the white under the green skin of a Granny Smith apple." (Random House, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Out of Africa, brilliantly
By Susan Vreeland
Page-turner of the week
Susan Vreeland set a high standard with Girl in Hyacinth Blue, her best selling 1999 novel inspired by a Vermeer painting. The Passion of Artemisia, another historical novel about real-life painters, is even better. The earlier novel, for all its strengths, sometimes digressed into bromides about the transcendence of art. The new one sticks to its story and its character.
And what a character. Vreeland tells the story of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), a dazzling painter whose often wretched personal life nearly killed her creative one. Using historical fact as a springboard, the novel traces 20 tumultuous years in Gentileschi's life, from a rape at 17—for which she is blamed—to an arranged marriage with Pietro Stiattesi, another promising painter. The loveless union warms with the birth of a daughter, but goes into deep freeze when Artemisia upstages her husband to win a place at Florence's Accademia dell'Arte. She isn't about to trade her paintbrush for her man. Vreeland's I unsentimental prose turns the factual Artemisia into a fictional heroine you won't soon forget. (Viking, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Picture perfect
By Joe Klein
Joe Klein helped get the Bill Clinton scandal party rolling when he popped the cork on Primary Colors, a thinly fictionalized look at Clinton's 1992 campaign. Now Klein seems very sorry, very sober, and not nearly as much fun.
The Natural downplays Clinton's personality in favor of his policies, wonkishly examining the battles behind his moderate New Democrat ideas. Tension flares between his Administration's centrists, who hope to rein in government, and the faction led by George Stephanopoulos and Hillary, who want to expand its reach.
There are a few intimate moments. Clinton hugs Hillary after her health-care plan fails, telling her it "was all my fault." During the tense days of the Monica Lewinsky investigation, he cheerfully tells his staff, "See, I haven't totally lost it" when a speech-writing session goes well. We even hear about Clinton rubbing up against Klein in a friendly, oddly feline fashion while bowling. But the book is more C-SPAN than The O'Reilly Factor. (Doubleday, $22.95)
Bottom Line: The Clinton years without the jokes
Everything That Matters in Life I Learned from Horses
By Bo Derek with Mark Seal
In this chatty and disarming memoir about her Southern California girlhood, Bo Derek says she started life as a tomboy. Before—at age 17—beginning an affair with (married) producer John Derek, 47, her passions were horses and motorbikes. She still has scars on her leg from a motorcycle crash when she was a girl. From that she devised a motto: Jump before you get thrown.
Her mother, Norma Bass (who was Ann-Margret's stylist), learned of her teenage daughter's affair with Derek by peeking at Bo's diary; Mom promptly slapped her daughter. Bo married John, the father of two grown children, less than three years later, after his divorce from Linda Evans came through. In 1979, she had her cornrowed moment of fame as 10's übercupcake.
After Derek's 1998 death, Bo, now 45 and single, took solace in new friends and more horses. She says she declined Jane Fonda's suggestion that she date Fonda's then-estranged husband, Ted Turner. For the record, Bo says she turned shades of crimson as Fonda confided that Turner was "a great lover." (ReganBooks/HarperCollins, $25.95)
Bottom Line: A stable effort
- Contributors:
- Jennifer Wulff,
- Neil Graves,
- Laura Italiano,
- Michelle Tauber,
- Carmela Ciuraru,
- Todd Seavey,
- Carolyn E. Davis.
