Trust No One

Despite the removal in 1995 of Bernard Lafferty-Doris Duke's hard-drinking, barely literate butler-as coexecutor of Duke's will, the disposition of the estate of the heiress to the American Tobacco Company fortune is still hotly contested. Here, prolific biographer Schwarz (Rose Kennedy, etc.) reconstructs Duke's final months, again raising the possibility not only that she was manipulated by those closest to her during her final days but that she was murdered. The murder theory was discredited recently, however, when the Los Angeles district attorney's office found no evidence of homicide. Schwarz doesn't seem to provide any material that was unavailable to or withheld from the L.A. investigation or, failing that, any evidence of a cover-up. He does offer a serviceable biography of Duke, including coverage of the well-known affairs with General Patton, Errol Flynn and others that were previously detailed in Duke godson Pony Duke's Too Rich, which Schwarz cites as a source. Rybak, who worked for Duke as a cook in the 1980s, delivers a few details on Duke's drinking (a fifth of sherry a night) and her art collection, but little new on Lafferty or on the possibility that Duke had an affair with Chandi Heffner, the grown woman she adopted in 1988. Schwarz does theorize that Duke intentionally killed her friend Eddie Terella-previous accounts have accepted the official explanation of an accident-but stops short of providing actual evidence. His writing can be slipshod-he has the habit of using ironically to mean coincidentally-and most of his research is limited to secondary sources. More crucial, Schwarz fails to capture Duke's personality, and this reduces the book to a litany of tragic excess. For a Doris with heart, try Too Rich. (Apr.)