Overview
Declaring twenty years long enough to stay married to the same women, Roger Gainey decides to walk out on his wife, Sheila, his partner in an electronic retailing empire. She had been a college student whey they met; he had been a TV game show host. Roger's involvement with infomercials began almost accidentally, but he soon realized the potential inherent in combining entertainment and a sales pitch into a seamless whole. Together, Roger and Sheila created one of the most successful of the infomercials and ultimately came to own a prosperous home-shopping network, PCE-TV: Privacy, Comfort, Entertainment. They have been a great team for so long that when Roger calmly tells Sheila he wants out of the marriage, their friends and business associates are stunned. But no one could anticipate Sheila's astonishment and, eventually, her fury. Devastated at first, Sheila blames herself, and remains hopeful that Roger will come back. When Derek Lang, their chief home-shopping competitor, approaches Sheila and suggests she join him in getting back at Roger, she rejects the idea immediately. It is only later - after she realizes that she must make a new life for herself, after she realizes that Roger is never coming back, after the divorce is final - that she wakes up to the anger that has been building in her. It is only then that Sheila decides to take Derek up on his offer to join him in the boardroom and the bedroom. So when Derek is found murdered, the police naturally zero in on Roger. But, as they soon discover, there is a wealth of suspects.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Roger Gainey's decision to have a midlife crisis is not the brightest business move he's ever made. The Scottsdale, Ariz.- based home-shopping magnate divests himself of his wife of 20 years (who also owns the controlling interest in one of his biggest moneymakers), along with some of the other people who helped make him what he isincluding the over-the-hill queen of the infomercials and a substance-abusing, gambling comedian. But Roger's bolt for freedom opens the door to revenge and murder. Stirring the pot is the fact that his wife, Sheila, gets in bed, both literally and businesswise, with Roger's electronic retailing rival, Derek Lang. Unfortunately, what should be a juicy story becomes the stuff of yawns in Jones's awkward hands. The book starts with a gripping, if crude, hook: someone, unnamed, is shot dead by someone else, also unnamed. As the story progresses in a long flashback, readers are meant to wonder which of two despicable menRoger or Derekwill be the victim. Few readers will survive the expository sequences without longing for a remote control to zap them to another channel, and flimsy character sketches rouse little interest in sorting out the players and their myriad machinations. By the time the identities of the victim and killer are revealed, readerseyes glazed by a story that is as insubstantial as the industry it seeks to portraywill have long ceased to care. (July)Kirkus Reviews
A debut novel chooses the infomercial industry as the setting for this wanly uplifting tale of a woman's post-divorce blossoming.Roger Gainey has just walked out on Sheila, his wife of 20 years, but the two are still in business together: They have created PCE, one of the nation's top home-shopping networks, and Sheila owns the production company that feeds the network its infomercials. While still in the numb-with-grief phase, she gets a call from Derek Lang, the sharkish but devastatingly handsome owner of PCE's main rival, who points out to her that her company need not have an exclusive relationship with PCE. Sheila demurs; at this point she's still loyal to Roger. But time passes, and an increasingly angry Sheila decides to follow Derek's advice. She woos a fading celebrity to pitch some face creams, then takes the resulting videotape to Derek. Sparks fly. A torrid affair begins. Derek continues to see his other lovers but is dazzled by Sheila's new-found independence and business acumen. Could his arctic heart be melting? Maybe, but Sheila will never know after someone ends Derek's life by pumping bullets into his body. Roger is the prime suspect: He's known to be jealous of his ex-wife's new boyfriend, and the murder weapon belongs to him. But wise Detective Raintree rejects the pat solution and interviews some of the big-haired women and one-step-from-jail men who populate the home-shopping world. His investigations turn up nothing, and the pressure grows to arrest Roger. The beleaguered executive teams up with his ex to reinterrogate the suspects and lucks out when the real murderer is good enough to confess.
While low-rent glitz and a wronged-woman's showy healing may appeal to some, the sleuthing here is clunky and the murderer's identity obvious. More disappointing, though, is the lack of behind-the-scenes dirt, or glimpses of the cynicism that implicitly drives the new breed of television hucksters.