Collins, Jackie. Hollywood wives, New York : Simon and Schuster, 1983.

Jackie Collins broke into the big time with this unashamedly trashy novel.  To date it remains her biggest success...Hollywood Wives appeals to those readers who are interested in sex, fame and money, in other words just about everyone.

If the The Loved One is high literature then Collins's blockbuster is low literature.  Moreover, like Waugh, she knows her territory, makes her points and takes no prisoners.  This is a portrait of Reagan's America and a gallery of tacky charcters indulging in 1980s materialism, decadence and success-at-any price overkill in Tinseltown.

The prose style is uncomplicated which translates as anyone with a low reading ability can follow the story.  Expletives, drug references crime and lots of sex are the author's stock-in-trade.  It could be argued that Collins is the female Harold Robbins, who veered even more into the pornographic.

Hollywood Wives evolved into a mega mini series and was a ratings smash.  Collins has just published her 33rd novel.

Dunne, John Gregory. True confessions, New York : Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006.

This gritty crime novel, set in the 1940s  is remembered as Dunne's finest achievement.  A prolific writer, journalist and screenwriter, he was the brother of Dominic Dunne novelist and social commentator (Vanity Fair columnist); and had an enduring marriage with Joan Didion whose novel Play It As It Lays also features in this blog.

First published in 1977, Dunne is able to indulge in a prose style which is expletive-laden.  In fact the book reads like a Tarrantino script - before Tarrantino had started making movies!  The core of the plot revolves around the famous still unsolved "Blue Dahlia" case and police corruption.  And two brothers, one a cop the other a priest.

True confessions  was adapted by Dunne for the movies.  With Robert de Niro and Robert Duvall in the leads, the film was a great success.