cover image Vicki

Vicki

Joyce Milton. St. Martin's Press, $16.95 (343pp) ISBN 978-0-312-83923-9

Vicki Morgan was an unusually attractive teenager, neither more nor less intelligent than most, but filled with dreams of becoming a cover girl or a movie star. She was picked up by Alfred Bloomingdale, scion of the department-store family, an instrumental figure in the rise of the Diner's Club credit card business and a member of Ronald Reagan's so-called Kitchen Cabinet (Bloomingdale's wife, Betsy, was Nancy Reagan's good friend). He began by introducing Vicki to the sadomasochistic orgies he favored, according to the authors, but their relationship subsequently took a more conventional turn, and he bound her to him with large amounts of money. When Betsy Bloomingdale cut this money off, Vicki instituted a palimony suit, but Alfred died, and then she herself was murdered. Whether she merits being the subject of a book is debatable, especially since the last 100 pages of this volume, about the trial and conviction of the killer, her friend Marvin Pancoast, are a tedious anticlimax. Milton is coauthor of The Rosenberg File; Bardach is a reporter and screenwriter. (March 31)