Too Damn Rich by Judith Gould

From the Publisher

It was a world they all desperately longed to be a part of, at any cost. Burghley's, Manhattan's most pretigious art auction house, is the setting for a tale of love and glammour, danger and suspense, where three vibrant and beautiful women will defy impossible odds to carve out the lives and loves they desire. Yet just as they achieve the pinnacle of success, a master criminal sets in motion a plan that threatens their very future.

Enter the world of Judith Gould where powerful and beatiuful women build dynasties, amass fortunes, and fulfill their every desire. From the boardrooms of the elite and influential to the bedrooms of the rich and famous, Judith Gould will take you to the heights of passion.

Publishers Weekly

Although set in locales (Park Avenue, royal castles, the Caribbean island of Mustique) that are nothing but classy, Gould's (Forever; Sins) newest succumbs to being merely trashy. Kenzie Turner is an assistant in the Old Masters Department of Burghley's, a Sotheby's-style auction house in Manhattan. Certain she will be chosen the new head of the department, Kenzie is horrified to learn that Bambi Parker has secured the job by virtue of hours of libidinous overtime in the limo of Burghley's new owner, Robert A. Goldsmith-a corpulent billionaire who made his fortune in discount department stores. Complicating Kenzie's life further are her multiorgasmic affairs with both old flame Charley Ferraro, a detective with the city's art theft squad, and Charley's temporary partner, Nordic-god Interpol detective Hans Hockert. But Kenzie's problems pale beside those of young and beautiful Countess Zandra von Hohenburg-Willemlohe and handsome Prince Karl-Heinz von und zu Engelwiesen. Zandra has taken refuge at Burghley's after fleeing London one step ahead of the goons searching for her deadbeat gambler brother. Prince Karl-Heinz has just turned 40; unless he marries and sires a son before his ailing father dies, the family billions will pass to his nephew. Punctuating the romantic fireworks are cryptic interludes in which mysterious men clad in black plot disaster for Burghley's. Even a surprising and neatly paced conclusion can't redeem this clichd, oversexed saga of the too damn rich and famous. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Could the author of the best-selling Never Too Rich (Dutton, 1990) be apologizing for her earlier novels, which feature an unremitting litany of celebrity lifestyles and rich folks? Probably not, though in Too Damn Rich she does set a murderer to stalking the clients and employees of a glitzy auction house.

BookList

Gould sets her novel in the midst of the New York City art auction scene and peoples it with a range of women and men, from working-class Kenzie Turner, an expert on old masters, to superrich Becky V, who has married and buried three wealthy husbands, including a U.S. president, a Greek tycoon, and a Spanish nobleman. The unlikely pair are brought together by Becky's friend, an impoverished countess who gets a job in Kenzie's department through the demands of the auction house owner's nouveau rich wife. The contrast in these women's lives is the most interesting facet in this otherwise formulaic, oversexed fiction. Throughout, Gould inserts short chapters, a "countdown to terror," that reveal plans for a major criminal activity aimed at the auction house by an international group of expert criminals, whose eventual attack is a startling tour de force.

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