With Friends Like These

Set in the glitzy world of London magazine publishing, this absorbing thriller is strong enough on sly insider atmosphere to compensate for its occasionally weak plot. Managing director of a Conde Nast-like magazine empire, Kit Preston has plenty to worry about as he negotiates the final stages of his divorce and faces his upcoming 40th birthday; but bigger problems begin when his star journalist, Anna Grant, writes a tell-all profile of the discontented wife of German industrialist Bruno Fulger. The article produces a complex aftermath that includes threats of lawsuits, staff infighting, a blistering attack on Anna in a rival magazine and the possible loss of a cosmetics ad account. Meanwhile, Kit and Anna yield to longstanding temptation and fall into each others' arms. When Anna is found strangled in her bed, grief-stricken Kit becomes a suspect and--fired by Fulger, who has bought the company--sets out to find the killer, depending on nothing but his own wits. Though the novel is marred by an improbable, unsatisfying resolution, Coleridge writes compellingly, with a gift for conveying both his characters' inner turmoil and the glossy backdrop of the London high life. (Nov.) FYI: Coleridge is managing director of Conde Nast Magazines in London.