the stars shine down: and down was where sheldon was headed

The 90s marked a decline in the quality of Sidney Sheldon's writing (something I noted not so long ago). He started with a sequel to one of his earlier successes. He followed that up with The Doomsday Conspiracy (post coming soon) and then The Stars Shine Down, another by-the-numbers tale of a strong woman who had tasted success, fame and power after a tough childhood and youth, after surviving a cruel world full of lascivious evil men. The book taught me what to do a Dun and Bradstreet on a firm meant, but made up for it with the Italian flashback, which was marked with the most violence I remember in any Sidney Sheldon book (take your pick from dismemberment of private parts, murder and rape -- not necessarily in that order, mind you). It's a pulpy page-turner with a twist you don't really care about. I leave you with yet another description of intimate achievement, as could only be written by Mr. Sheldon:

They were making love, and it was without a beginning or an ending, a river that swept him along faster and faster, and the tide began to pull at him, sucking him down and down, deeper and deeper, into a velvet darkness that exploded into a thousand stars. And the miracle was that it happened again, and once again, until he lay there panting and exhausted.

"I can't believe this," he said.

Same here.