From Publishers Weekly
A ruthless billionaire tycoon is driven to completely possess a beautiful but flawed younger woman with a mind of her own in this loosely plotted psychodrama. Although 50-ish New York magnate Teddy Franklin casually buys and sells S&P 500 companies, he is stymied by Barbara Hickman, the 20-ish daughter of his former wine supplier, with whom he is completely obsessed. Barbara likes Teddy, but dark, sexual secrets from her Radcliffe years and the deaths of loved ones have left her unbalanced and defensive. Unscrupulous Teddy pays for a shrink, then hires a thug to steal Barbara's session tapes. His machinations cause the death of a security guard, and the cops get wind of his involvement. Meanwhile, the relationship escalates and Barbara reveals all to her therapist. When Teddy lets Barbara know he's learned her secrets, she forgives him, but the cops are closing in on the tycoon. With the help of his son, he escapes to a Canadian Northwest mining town, but there he is stalked by killers; his only ally is an Eskimo prostitute. Barbara faces her own perils in New York, and the pair struggle to reconnect before it's too late. Bogner (To Die in Provence) has smoothly updated this novel, first published in the '70s. Less a thriller than a portrait of obsession, his engrossing if melodramatic tale is furnished with several explicit sex scenes. Short on plot but long on atmosphere, it plays on fantasies of high-stakes living in the moneyed circles of New York and Boston. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A sexy book . . . all the pathos, greed and grief, longing and impatience, holiness and obscenity, depravity and creativity of human sexuality . . . an exquisite and moving, terrifying and haunting multifaceted novel."--Chicago Sun-Times


Review
"A sexy book . . . all the pathos, greed and grief, longing and impatience, holiness and obscenity, depravity and creativity of human sexuality . . . an exquisite and moving, terrifying and haunting multifaceted novel."--Chicago Sun-Times


Review
"A sexy book . . . all the pathos, greed and grief, longing and impatience, holiness and obscenity, depravity and creativity of human sexuality . . . an exquisite and moving, terrifying and haunting multifaceted novel."--Chicago Sun-Times


Book Description
Billionaire financier Teddy Franklin is a force to be reckoned with, an internationally famous power broker whose high-stakes wheeling and dealing send economic tremors from Wall Street to Zurich. He buys and sells corporations at will, and holds the careers of powerful lawyers and politicians in the palm of his well-manicured hand. Nothing, absolutely nothing is beyond Teddy's reach . . .

Until he meets her.

Beautiful, tantalizing, mercurial, and perverse, Barbara captivates Teddy's imagination and carnal desire like no woman he has ever met. And the more she toys with his feverish attentions, driving him to excruciating heights of animal lust while withholding the darkest, deepest secrets of her heart, the more he craves to totally possess her, body and soul, until his desperate obsession with this one irresistibly sensual and seductive woman drives him to the brink of insanity--and worse.


About the Author
Norman Bogner is the New York Times bestselling author of Seventh Avenue, Honor Thy Wife, and The Madonna Complex. He lives in California.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Billionaire financier Teddy Franklin is a force to be reckoned with, an internationally famous power broker whose high-stakes wheeling and dealing send economic tremors from Wall Street to Zurich. He buys and sells corporations at will, and holds the careers of powerful lawyers and politicians in the palm of his well-manicured hand. Nothing, absolutely nothing is beyond Teddy's reach . . .

Until he meets her.

Beautiful, tantalizing, mercurial, and perverse, Barbara captivates Teddy's imagination and carnal desire like no woman he has ever met. And the more she toys with his feverish attentions, driving him to excruciating heights of animal lust while withholding the darkest, deepest secrets of her heart, the more he craves to totally possess her, body and soul, until his desperate obsession with this one irresistibly sensual and seductive woman drives him to the brink of insanity--and worse.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

A ruthless billionaire tycoon is driven to completely possess a beautiful but flawed younger woman with a mind of her own in this loosely plotted psychodrama. Although 50-ish New York magnate Teddy Franklin casually buys and sells S&P 500 companies, he is stymied by Barbara Hickman, the 20-ish daughter of his former wine supplier, with whom he is completely obsessed. Barbara likes Teddy, but dark, sexual secrets from her Radcliffe years and the deaths of loved ones have left her unbalanced and defensive. Unscrupulous Teddy pays for a shrink, then hires a thug to steal Barbara's session tapes. His machinations cause the death of a security guard, and the cops get wind of his involvement. Meanwhile, the relationship escalates and Barbara reveals all to her therapist. When Teddy lets Barbara know he's learned her secrets, she forgives him, but the cops are closing in on the tycoon. With the help of his son, he escapes to a Canadian Northwest mining town, but there he is stalked by killers; his only ally is an Eskimo prostitute. Barbara faces her own perils in New York, and the pair struggle to reconnect before it's too late. Bogner (To Die in Provence) has smoothly updated this novel, first published in the '70s. Less a thriller than a portrait of obsession, his engrossing if melodramatic tale is furnished with several explicit sex scenes. Short on plot but long on atmosphere, it plays on fantasies of high-stakes living in the moneyed circles of New York and Boston. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Internet Book Watch - Internet Book Watch

Perhaps the only more powerful person than Teddy Franklin in the international banking communities of Wall St., London, and Zurich is Greenspan. When Teddy Franklin decides to make a deal, the Fortune 500 feels the impact as if an earthquake hit. Politicians know not the mess with Teddy because he can break any one of them. However, Teddy's world changes when Barbara Hickman enters his life. Though three decades younger than him, Teddy covets Barbara like he has not desired any person or thing in years. Teddy treats his approach to Barbara the way he handled a business deal using any means, including immoral to obtain his wants. He gains her inner secrets that she provides to a psychiatrist he arranged for her to see. However, as he obsesses over her, Teddy's world begins to crash around him, leaving him with few options. The Madonna Complex is an entertaining tale centering on the potential destructiveness of obsession. The story line is more of a character study than a thriller as Norman Bogner provides a deep look into Teddy and Barbara's thought processes and inner gut emotions. Graphic sex scenes may turn off some readers, but add to the overall feel of the reader being an observer. Though the subplot involving the law and killers subtract from the tale by trying to twist it into a thriller, the obsession which is the main story line brilliantly works leading to a fabulous absorbing look at extreme behavior.

Kirkus Reviews

Plotboiler Bogner's tenth novel (Honor Thy Wife, 1999, etc.) is actually a rewrite of a sex-and-shopping tale he published some 30 years ago, now "totally rewritten for the 21st century . . . and 25% shorter." Though it bristles with contemporary brand names, pop singers, art-world babble, Internet dot-com companies, and trendy Manhattan eateries, Bogner's story remains a 1970s sin-and-salvation mattress-pounder. Widowed, 50-something billionaire financier and wheeler-dealer Teddy Franklin has bought every pleasure he ever wanted until he meets Barbara Hickman, the daughter of a wine merchant whose business affairs Franklin had offered to restructure. Barbara, a United Nations translator, has a connoisseur's knowledge of big money passions and curves that would make men of a bygone era say hubba-hubba. Alas, she harbors dark feelings of worthlessness that inspire her to casual promiscuity with every man but Teddy, whose dazzlingly expensive acts of largesse (name-brand watch, name-location apartment, dinner at name restaurants, roses roses everywhere) leave her nonplused. She feeds his obsession by teasing him. Desperate to learn about her private life, Teddy pays his Latino crime boss buddy to burglarize the office of Barbara's psychiatrist. Faster than you can say "Watergate," the burglary results in an accidental death. Teddy tries to buy off the victim's daughter and finally achieves bliss when Barbara throws underwear to the wind and tells him to "be diabolical with me." After gloriously naughty sex and brand-name spending, they must learn that they truly love each other when Teddy finds himself blackmailed and then held for ransom in a remotecornerof the Canadian frontier, with only Barbara to come to his rescue. Lumpy prose ("the hiss of sputtering bus fumes cannibalized the air") and lurid glimpses of the high life seem the appropriate accouterments for this tiresome tale of mutual obsession between a wanton beauty and an odious old goat. A gussied-up Jacqueline Susann novel for those who have not had the pleasure or the pain.