Douglas Kennedy – Temptation - Review

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.