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Summary
Summary
The Best Laid Plans tells the explosive story of the beautiful and ambitious Leslie Stewart, who learns that for some men power is the greatest aphrodisiac, and of Oliver Russell, the handsome governor of a small southern state, who finds out why hell has no fury like a woman scorned.
With the unexpected twists and turns that are the hallmarks of his mega-bestselling novels, Sidney Sheldon spins a tale of two equally determined people headed on a collision course. Oliver has a strategy to win the White House; Leslie has a scheme to make him wish he'd never been born. They both should have known that even the best-laid plans can go dangerously astray... in a dangerous way.
Author Notes
Born in Chicago on February 11, 1917, Sidney Sheldon entered Northwestern University on a scholarship in 1935, but was soon forced to drop out due to the Depression. He went to Manhattan in hopes of becoming a songwriter, but decided to try the west coast where he was hired as a script reader by Universal Studios. He had managed to break into screenwriting on a modest basis when World War II broke out. After he was discharged from the Air Force for medical reasons, he began to write musicals and comedies for the New York stage. At the age of 25, he had three musicals playing on Broadway-- Merry Widow, Jackpot, and Dream with Music. He went on to win a Tony Award for the musical Redhead.
Sheldon eventually returned to Hollywood and spent 12 years as a successful screenwriter at both MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures. His acclaim as a screenwriter was capped by the Oscar he won for the screenplay of The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (1947). He wrote 25 films during his lifetime including Jumbo and Anything Goes. He won a Screen Writers Guild Award for best musical of the year for Easter Parade in 1948 and for Annie Get Your Gun in 1950. He also wrote and produced several successful television series, including The Patty Duke Show, I Dream of Jeannie, and Hart to Hart.
One of the world's best-selling writers, Sheldon decided to try writing a novel when he got an idea that he could not adapt to a play or a screenplay. His first novel, The Naked Face, won an Edgar for the best mystery novel of 1970. He wrote numerous novels during his lifetime including The Other Side of Midnight, Bloodline, Rage of Angels, If Tomorrow Comes, Windmills of the Gods, and Tell Me Your Dreams. He died on January 30, 2007. His title Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Washington politics, a jilted woman's revenge and the war in Bosnia plague an idealistic but lecherous president in Sheldon's latest tale of beautiful people, money and deception. On his way up the ladder of success, Oliver Russell breaks his engagement to Leslie Stewart, a stylish, intelligent public relations executive who knows how to nurture a grudge. Leslie marries a rich old man, turns her husband's fortune into a news empire, waits to go after Oliver until he occupies the White House and then hits him with every scandal-ridden headline she can muster. Sheldon (Morning, Noon, and Night, etc.) peoples his story with familiar yet colorful supporting characters: the old-style back-room politician, the go-getter young journalist, the self-serving spin-doctor. The plot twists will fool very few readers, yet they manage to keep the pages turning, while scenes like the first encounter between the journalist and the Bosnian orphan boy she takes into her care are touching despite their unoriginality. In short, Sheldon once again proves himself the master of the made-for-TV novel. The vindictive heroine, a cross between Katharine Graham and Farrah Fawcett, provides the one special element that sets this work apart from other easily read and easily forgotten fiction by this eternally bestselling writer. Foreign rights sold in the U.K., Germany, Holland, Sweden, Brazil, Finland and Israel; world Spanish rights: Emece; Literary Guild selection. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Imagine a seven-year-old telling a story. "And then we went to Disneyland, and then we bought a car, and then my dad lost his job . . . "Perhaps it's time for Sheldon to retire his pen, because this is the kind of prose he is producing. In his latest novel, a girl gets jilted by her fiance, then she seeks revenge, then her ex-fiancebecomes president, then she runs a newspaper, then another girl wants to be a reporter, then the second girl ends up working for the first girl, and then the president is part of a scandal. The end. The plot itself is not quite so horrible, really, but Sheldon's storytelling lacks depth and color. Take, for instance, the part about how Leslie Stewart began as a newspaper publisher and, three pages later, becomes one of the most powerful media moguls in the country. Huh? It makes the reader ask, "Where's the beef?" But despite the novel's deficiency in substance, it will likely attract the thousands of readers who insist on returning to Sheldon's books time and time again. --Mary Frances Wilkens
Kirkus Review
Schlockmeister Sheldon (Morning, Noon and Night, 1995, etc.) outdoes himself with an overcharged (albeit eminently readable) tale about a randy American president and the vengeful newspaper heiress he done wrong. Leslie Stewart, a brainy and beauteous ad agency exec, falls hard for a handsome client, attorney Oliver Russell, whose campaign for the governorship of Kentucky began foundering when he lost the support of Senator Todd Davis after two-timing Davis's daughter Jan. The crafty, powerful lawmaker soon engineers a reconciliation between Jan and Oliver, who unhesitatingly sacrifices Leslie on the altar of his political ambition. In short order, the happy pair find themselves the Bluegrass State's first couple while embittered Leslie heads to Arizona, where she eventually becomes the trophy wife of wealthy businessman Henry Chambers. Henry obligingly dies two years later, freeing Leslie to expand his media holdings in aid of her obsessive desire to get even with the inconstant Oliver. Years later, as the Russells are moving into the White House, the vindictive publisher acquires influential newspaper/television outlets in D.C., which she uses to rake up old scandals that put her erstwhile lover in a bad light. Further disclosures of adultery, murder, and other high crimes have the embattled chief executive on the ropes. In a startling reversal of fortune, however, the true villain of the piece is exposed on live TV, leaving Leslie with egg and more on her lovely face, and allowing Oliver to pursue a semi-noble agenda calculated to bring peace to the Middle East. A twisty yarn with few real surprises: Sheldon continues to exploit his special talent for getting down and dirty with the high and mighty. (Literary Guild selection)
Library Journal Review
A power-hungry Southern governor and his scorned lover collide in this latest from the ever-popular Sheldon. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
