Douglas
Kennedy has an amazing talent as a modern novelist. He has that
particular skill to pull the reader into his tale, ensures you can
relate personally with at least the main character and drives the
story forward not letting up till the last word is written. Calling a
book a "page-turner" has become a well used cliché, and
has been for many years. However this novel, Temptation, is a
riveting yarn, feeling the protagonist's visceral elation and the
dregs he feels while fighting for his personal and professional life.
Temptation is a well told tale.
David
Armitage happens to be a regular guy, a struggling writer who has
been working at a commercial bookstore for thirteen years. David's
wife tried the acting gig, both moving from the mid west to become
successful artists in the "big smoke", Hollywood, only
finding the pressures of simply making a living, putting food on the
table, too great, so both get "regular jobs...he a retailer and
she a telemarketer. Then the baby comes along and now making a living
becomes serious. David however continues to write stage plays and
screenplays, managing to get a true blue agent that believes in his
talent, a rarity, it seems, in tinsel town.
One
morning he receives "the" phone call that every writer only
dreams about: a studio has an interest in his script and wants to buy
it and do a pilot for television. The avalanche of success begins,
and the pilot leads to a hit comedy that skyrockets in the
ratings...David Armitage is now the most talked about writer in town
and the bucks are rolling in.
The
goddess of success, however, is not a compassionate mistress, and
David Armitage, blind to the many pitfalls, leaves his wife and
daughter for a high octane producer at the Fox Network. Life could
not really get any better, money, a beautiful girlfriend, lavish
apartment, liquid lunches, presentation dinners and a request from a
multi-billionaire to collaborate on a new project.
Armitage
is invited to the billionaire's personal island in the Caribbean,
experiencing luxury in the extreme, meeting the man's beautiful wife
when, slowly, things start to go awry in David's life. Has he
sabotaged his own success or is there something more sinister going
on?
Temptation
is an entertaining and clever novel. As readers, we actually feel
David's euphoria from his successes and his frustration, anger and
his want of revenge when life turns in the wrong direction.
I
have never been disappointed with any of Kennedy's novels and
certainly not with this one.
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