The Madonna Complex [Hardcover]

Norman Bogner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2000

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 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.

Editorial Reviews

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

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Forge; 2nd edition (August 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312875193
• ISBN-13: 978-0312875190
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,936,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A differt type of work from this author, July 26, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Madonna Complex (Hardcover)

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.

Harriet Klausner