NEVER FORGET

Spanning two years and two continents, this lurid Hollywood melodrama swirls around the passionate relationship between Maggie Nash, an older and overly ambitious movie director, and her young discovery, Max Jaxon. Maggie meets Max in Hollywood while drumming up funds for her next movie, which she hopes will win her father, legendary director Charles Nash, away from his gold-digging mistress. After a few nights of frenzied sex, Maggie whisks Max off to Paris, where he stars in her movie and her life. But when Max meets and falls in love with actress Kristen Caulfield, Maggie expands their twosome into a threesome. Their ménage à trois turns deadly, however, when Max and Kristen break away from Maggie and an "accident" occurs on the set, nearly killing Max. The narrative alternates between the past (the two years leading up to the murder attempt) and the present (the ongoing investigation into the attempt), but Racina (The Madman's Diary) spends more time detailing the past—and the trio's daring sexcapades—than developing his characters. Racina, a former writer for Guiding Light and Another World, has a deft ear for dialogue, but his extraneous sex scenes do little to titillate and even less to endear the reader to his shallow characters. (Aug. 6)