The Golden Circle

Dale Kenton vows to avoid emotional entanglements forever after her father, a half-successful film producer, runs off to marry a wealthy, aging actress. While visiting Paris as an art history student, she meets wealthy Katherine Bruner, and the two become instant friends. They meet again six years later, and Katherine introduces Dale to the New York art scene. There Dale joins the esteemed House of Frazier, a gallery where shrewd, kindly Kenneth Frazier presides over art auctions of fantastic proportions. Someone has been substituting forgeries for priceless artworks, however, and soon Dale is asked to help investigate who could be responsible: a hard-bitten department head, a debonair English rival or maybe even the owner's ambitious son, by now married to Katherine but eclipsed by his father in every way. This first novel by the collaborative team that wrote New York on $500 a Day offers few surprises; readers won't blink an eye when Dale's emotional reserve crumbles in the arms of an arrogant Russian. Largely unoriginal descriptions of a cut-throat, glitzy art world and its habitues limit the book's interest. Author tour. (November 17)