Bad Company: Drugs, Hollywood, and the Cotton Club Murder

This story of the meeting and tangled business relationship of three unlikely partners, written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for (New York) Newsday , is a superficial effort. In an apparent rush to publish, Wick tells a tale of murder before the case has been resolved. Implicated in the bizarre tale are Karen ``Laney'' Jacobs, a Florida drug dealer; Roy Radin, a Long Island, N.Y., entrepreneur who had made a dubious name as a packager of vaudeville shows featuring performers whose careers were distinctly on a downhill slide; and Robert Evans, producer of the movies The Godfather and Chinatown . Jacobs introduced Evans and Radin in the hope of co-producing a film with them, The Cotton Club . But as the negotiations proceeded, she saw herself frozen out of the project, and Radin was slain in L.A. in 1983. According to Wick, Jacobs not only arranged this death but also, later, that of her husband. Photos not seen by PW. (July)