Free to Love

The ennui of the rich and recherche proves contagious as Trump ( For Love Alone ) unpacks a steamer trunk of scandals already over-familiar to gossip-column readers. Katrinka van Hollen, beauteous Czech Olympic skier and ex-wife of cutthroat billionaire Adam Graham, keeps busy expanding her hotel empire and revelling in her second marriage to media honcho Mark van Hollen. Her happiness galls the dastardly Adam, who plots to bring her crashing to earth. Meanwhile, she jets to social hot-spots, bounds through countless parties with friends whose cash can't buy them decent relationships, defends her sulky, long-lost son Christian (a Eurotrash poster boy) against date-rape allegations, fends off Adam's legal broadsides and commiserates with Mark, whose company is threatened by a takeover attempt only a few weeks after he's targeted by a femme fatale employed by a Mayflower madam to wreck their marriage--and that's just the short list. Trump writes smooth prose and whips up a plot with more kinks than the Kama Sutra, but she substitutes brand names for evocative descriptions, so her glitz never really glitters. Clumsy machinations and a bevy of one-note characters further mar the novel, which will probably reach bestseller lists nonetheless. (Oct.)