Vegas Heat

ANNOTATION

New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels continues the saga of the Colemans and the Thorntons. In 1980, Fanny Thornton's ex-husband becomes gravely ill so she steps in to run his life's work--Babylon, Vegas's most magnificent casino--and vows to make her family whole again in the process. 400 pp. National print publicity. National print ads. 150,000 print.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The year is 1980. Las Vegas has grown from a crude desert wasteland filled with bawdy miners and bingo parlors into a showplace of dazzling casinos - a gambler's paradise. Fanny Thornton has recently married Sallie's son, Simon, but theirs is not a happy union. Simon is a jealous, domineering man whose suspicions and increasing paranoia about his brother - Fanny's ex-husband Ash Thornton - have estranged Fanny from her four children. But now Ash is ill, possibly dying. Babylon, his life's achievement - and Vegas's most magnificent casino - is in danger of falling into the wrong hands. It is Fanny who reluctantly steps in to take over Babylon...Fanny who vows to make her family whole again even as Simon tries to sabotage her at every turn. But when another man offers her the chance for a new beginning, it is a gamble Fanny is determined to take.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Michaels's Vegas Rich saw millionaire ex-prostitute Sallie Coleman bequeath her fortune to her daughter-in-law, Fanny Thornton. In this second installment of an intended trilogy, it is 1980 and Fanny has divorced her misanthropic playboy husband, Ash Thornton, who has been confined to a wheelchair since he fell from a girder during the construction of Babylon, the Thorntons' Las Vegas casino. Searching for happiness, Fanny marries her longtime lover, Simon, who is Ash's brother. After three years of living in the mountains breeding Yorkie pups, Fanny remains unfulfilled. Simon's sudden possessiveness has stifled her spirit and estranged her four children, including daughter Sunny, who is fighting a debilitating disease. When Ash learns he hasn't long to live, Fanny takes over Babylon and ends her marriage to Simon, who tries to gain possession of the casino through the divorce proceedings, only to be trounced in a gratifying scene featuring a tough-as-nails lawyer. Elsewhere, however, Michaels's soap-opera plotting is trite and her villains disappointingly wimpy. Fanny even manages to save Ash from some mafioso-type loan sharks by giving them a stern tongue-lashing and ordering the electricity in their casinos switched off. Crude sex scenes ("Stoke that fire, baby. Do it, do it, do it!") are thankfully few, but long-lost Thornton relatives and illegitimate offspring swarm like locusts. In the end, Fanny leaves Las Vegas with a new man, this one blessedly unrelated to the Thornton clan, though Michaels shows no sign of straying from her reliable formula of equal parts glitz and true grit. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Continuing the family saga begun in Vegas Rich (Kensington, 1996), Michaels serves up a murky brew of sibling rivalry, jealousy, love, and hate. Fanny Thornton, now the clan matriarch, is torn apart by the competing demands of her family, with her adult children taking sides in her battles with her ex-husband, Ash. Things become even more complicated when she marries Ash's twin brother, Simon. The story does not end with this book, however. A third volume is promised, although it is hard to imagine the need to continue the story of such a dysfunctional group. In addition to the greedy, selfish characters, Michaels has created a confused and muddied plot. Rather than developing her characters, she simply has them react to various episodes in their lives, changing motivations and actions as seems expedient for the story. Buy on demand, though libraries would do better to wait for the paperback.-Barbara E. Kemp, SUNY at Albany Libs.

Kirkus Reviews

Michaels's second in her highly touted trilogy (Vegas Rich, 1996) is more like Vegas lukewarm: Far too many characters' personalities flip-flop 180 degrees, and an overabundance of fatal illnesses, vicious betrayals, reunions with never-before-met relatives, and general excess dilute the story instead of intensifying it.

Fanny Thornton is following in the footsteps of her mother-in- law Sallie, the intrepid hooker-turned-entrepreneur of this series' equally jam-packed opener. Not that Fanny's turning tricks; she's just taking Vegas by storm as the most powerful woman in the state of Nevada. When Ash, her manipulative ex-husband, falls ill and learns that he's dying, he insists that Fanny, now married to Ash's brother Simon, take over Babylon, the booming casino that maintains and builds the Thornton family fortune. But Simon can't deal with sharing Fanny with either her family or the Vegas business world, so he files for divorce, leaving Fanny alone again. Meantime, Fanny and Ash's sons, twins Sage and Birch, are also in the picture, as are their daughters: Billie, who remains a shadowy figure throughout, and Sunny, who develops multiple sclerosis but seems more like a schizophrenic with all the inconsistencies her character exhibits (one minute she's an angel, the next a child abuser; one minute she's on mom's side, the next on dad's, etc.). Suddenly Ash—out of nowhere it seems—becomes the good guy, helping Fanny mend her messy relationships with her children, and Simon becomes the villain, trying to steal Babylon and make Fanny's life generally miserable.

Michaels sets the stage for book number three with Fanny's purchase (at Ash's request) of land in Atlantic City (wonder what they'll build there?), her newfound "friendship" with the mysterious and handsome Marcus Reed, and the introduction of a new and (of course) suspect branch of the family.