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“I found Lovers and Players a poor book written in a...”

written by dienske on 12/11/2009

I found Lovers and Players a poor book written in a flat style. Although the book does not pretend to be anything else than entertainment, it even fails to entertain. The story lines are chopped up in short episodes in an effort to suggest speed. In real, this slows down the pace of the book, because Collins tends to give a summary of everything that happened earlier before coming up with new information. She also often breaks the episode off at a cliffhanger-like point, letting a character read a will but not telling the reader what's in it, for instance. This might work in TV series but in a book it is pure contempt of the readers. After Red Diamond, who is a character so bad that he is totally uninteresting, has entered a meeting with two Russian whores on his arms, Collins reminds us of this scene later in the book, but multiplied: "with two hookers on each arm".

People, situations and feelings are described over and over again in the exact same words (after five times I really don't want to read anymore that Jett's hair is "dirt blond"), and this makes me angry. Does Collins think I have no short term memory?



The plot contains lots of elements that are not of any importance to the story. (Example: Red Diamond tries to sabotage one son by making two banks pull out of a building project and the other by trying to make him pay his gambling debts. The first simply attracts another bank, end of storyline. The second actually never pays the debts. Even though nothing happens, these situations are described many times throughout the book)

If all superfluous plot lines, persons and descriptions were erased from this work of more than 500 pages, a very thin thriller would remain. And that is what this book is: a thin thriller blown up to an over-sized novel.



Is there nothing good about this book? Well, the conversations are actually written down quite naturally. The broken English that the Russian whores speak to their customers is funny - but why on earth do they continue speaking poor English when they're amongst each other in a Russian Club?



Entertainment or not, a book has to be written properly. Next time Jackie Collins needs an editor with a pair of sharp scissors. Maybe the next book then will turn out less boring.