Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame: A Memoir

Hollywood actress Lee's acrimonious account of her 10-year relationship with Richard Pryor (including marriage and divorce) dominates this tell-all. Documenting Pryor's coke-snorting, mood swings, macho behavior and affairs, she evinces precious little insight into why she kept going back to a man who, by her account, beat her with fists and bottles. The rest of the book is an assemblage of mediocre gossip forced into a diary-like format. She has affairs with Warren Beatty and Art Garfunkel, hangs out with Roman Polanski, goes Vegas-ing with Adnan Khashoggisp ok , drops in at the Playboy Mansion and rubs elbows with Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Michelle Phillips, Ryan O'Neal et al. We are clearly supposed to feel sympathy for a woman who is making an emotional comeback and coping with childhood scars inflicted by a schizophrenic mother and a wife-battering father. But Lee is so breathlessly eager to shock, she simply bores instead. 35,000 first printing; $40,000 ad/promo; first serial to Penthouse. (Dec.)