Collins's books are like home movies of Hollywoodites, showing them without makeup or flattering lighting. Yet because of their wealth and physical handsomeness, and certainly because of the excitement in their lives, her characters are often more fascinating and attracting than anything else.

While what happens to them is always the fun of reading a Collins novel, who it happens to and why they are caught up in such circumstances is a major triumph of her writing. Why are these people like they are? What circumstances in their lives have created their ambition and "unconventional" outlook? Reading more than one Collins novel will show how Collins invariably finds a "past" for her major characters that forms them into sometimes strange but always interesting creatures of the modern world. Thus, while plot is always the attraction, a Collins novel involves the reader in the personalities and ambitions...