As I mentioned before, when it comes to Zebra books
you really have to lower your expectation if you ever want to enjoy one of
their publications. Like this 1989 Hollywood-type of a novel probably by a
pseudonym. I came upon it by chance at a now-defunct used bookstore in Ottawa. It
was one of the many trashy paperbacks I gathered up that faithful day, and PRIVATE VIEWING was the first that I found
myself engaging in. It tells an effective tale of the shenanigans happening
behind a hit TV series, and you all know how I feel about Tinseltown… If you
don’t by now then you must be a newbie to this blog. Hope you stick around.
Coming back to PRIVATE
VIEWING, author Darcy Lockhart skillfully intertwines the lives of the rich
and (no always) famous and ends up delivering an entertaining novel that is narratively
fast moving and hard to put down. While her fixation on hot cars could have
been omitted, the general feeling I got while reading this thing is that she
clearly has fun baring the secret passions of her colorful cast of characters.
Her writing is sharp, engaging and even emotional at times. She may not have
reinvented the sub-genre but kudos to her for knowing how to create a fun and
compelling read.
As you can see, I was pleasantly surprised by the
overall delivery. Like I said, it does follow the Jackie Collins School of Writing
very effectively and turns out to be one of the good ones from the Zebra line. I would have loved to
check out other books by this author but PRIVATE
VIEWING seems to be the only one she has ever written under the Lockhart
name. I’m still holding on to my beat-up copy in the hopes of returning to it
one of these days. But with all those unread books gathering dust on my shelves
right now I clearly doubt it. Hope you enjoy this one as I did if you ever grab
yourself a copy.
Until next post—Martin
UPDATE: It appears that this title is the second book
written by Lockhart. Her first is actually called BIGHORN (wink, wink) published
in 1986 from Medallion Books and is all about ranching and sex. One word: yummy.
