Where literary output is concerned, Sidney Sheldon is a male version of Danielle Steel. Both quality and quantity are comparable. Like Steel’s work, Sheldon’s popcorn paperbacks feature beautiful women and strong sensual men living in the lap of luxury, but on a few occasions, he manages to break free of the usual fetters of the genre to produce endings that are not happy but are inevitable and as resonating as a clash of cymbals. The best of these occurs in A Stranger in the Mirror, but Rage of Angels and The Other Side of Midnight are also notable for their bitter-as-black-coffee finales. Unfortunately the rest of Sheldon’s novels are oversweetened lemonade in comparison, and the subject of this review is especially so.
If Tomorrow Comes is a riches-to-rags-to-riches story, and considering its author’s style, I didn’t expect a lot of realism. But neither did I expect such an offensive, blindly hypocritical little tale, though the first part of the book is quite readable. The story begins with Tracy Whitney arriving at the bank where she works; as is par for the course, Tracy is lively, intelligent, sensuous and sparkling, all of which are adjectives applied to various features of her face. She’s also a few months pregnant by her snobbish rich fiance (you can tell he’s not the hero, because he doesn’t give her an orgasm when they have sex). If this was an action movie, this would be the point where the day-away-from-retirement cop was gunned down as he showed people pictures of his new grandchild, but since it’s a Sheldon book, Tracy learns that her mother committed suicide because a man called Joe Romano conned her out of the family business. Romano, in case you haven’t guessed from the name, is one of the Mafia, so Tracy buys a gun and tries to scare him into writing out a confession of what he did. Confessions extorted at the point of a gun are perfectly admissible as legal evidence, of course, and no one is ever going to fit Tracy with cement boots for threatening to shoot a mobster. Anyway, one can overlook her detour into Loony Land on the grounds of extreme grief.
Proving that slightly more sense than Tracy’s is necessary for membership in La Cosa Nostra, Romano tricks and overpowers her when she points the gun at him, then tries to rape her. Good thing I didn’t expect this book to rise above that tired cliché. Tracy manages to get the gun back and shoots him, though not fatally. Then she calls an ambulance, forgetting all about her grand scheme of revenge, and flees for the airport, where she’s promptly arrested for attempted murder. Romano, again exhibiting more brains than the person who the author claims has an “intelligent face”, claims that, when caught in the act of stealing a valuable painting from his house, Tracy shot him. On Romano’s side is a powerful crime boss called Anthony Orsatti, though Tracy is appointed a lawyer called Perry Pope, who tells her that he’s made a deal with the judge. If she pleads guilty, and thereby saves the state from the expense of a trial, she’ll get a suspended sentence.
This type of deal will be familiar to anyone who’s read The Other Side of Midnight. Heck, it should be familiar to anyone who realizes that things have to get much, much worse for poor, ill-treated, beautiful Tracy before the author rescues her. The only person who doesn’t see what’s happening is Tracy herself, who stands there bewildered as the judge sentences her to fifteen years in prison for attempted murder. She calls her fiance from prison, but he knows his role in the script and refuses to help her. Then she has to undergo the physical examination, where the doctor uses an unsterilized speculum. Then another prisoner makes a pass at her. Could things get any worse for our intrepid heroine? Why, of course – although she’s lost her job, her fiance, and her freedom, there’s still her baby, though her looks are there to stay.
Dressed in the drab prison uniform, her face bruised with fatigue, Tracy Whitney still looked beautiful. She had a lovely, candid face… She was young and beautiful and fresh.
Tracy doesn’t tell anyone about her pregnancy, including the warden, so he puts her in a cell with three other women, one of whom is a black amazon called Ernestine Littlechap, who’s the top dog there. Since Tracy has “long tapering legs”, as opposed to those of us who have ankles wider than our hips, the other women sexually assault her and beat her up, resulting in a miscarriage. This would be traumatic and certainly dramatic if it wasn’t so paint-by-numbers; you clearly recognize the miscarriage as the Official Low Point of Tracy’s life, from which she will grow stronger and beat the system and have revenge on everyone who done her wrong. Adding a touch of Grrl Power, she dismisses the thought of punishing her cellmates for the beating and miscarriage – excuse me, the murder of her unborn baby, as it’s referred to in the novel. Instead, her ire is directed at the men who destroyed her life – Joe Romano, Perry Pope, Anthony Orsatti, the judge and her fiance.
She was going to make them pay… Tomorrow, she thought. If tomorrow comes.
Hey, she said the title, just like in any made-for-TV movie. Tracy refuses to squeal on her cellmates, and is returned to the scene of the crime, where she asks Ernestine Littlechap to help her escape. Upping the stakes, another woman called Big Bertha takes an interest in Tracy – in the novel, I counted fourteen people who found Tracy hot – and since Ernestine is due for parole soon, Tracy has to leave before she’s introduced to Big Bertha’s Little Bertha. She manages to become a trusty, taking care of the warden’s little daughter, while she and Ernestine plan a getaway using a laundry cart but at the last minute, the warden’s daughter falls into a lake. Tracy leaps in to save her, forgetting that she can’t swim, which is typical for Tracy. Still, this is clearly the Turning Point where her fortunes take an upswing. Tracy is rewarded for her bravery (as opposed to being punished because she’s just so beautiful) by being featured in Time, Newsweek and People, making her fiance think, “She’s still beautiful.” I guess those ugly pills he slipped her didn’t work. Finally, she’s given a pardon by the governor.
Here, by the way, is where the barely credible section of the book comes to a sputtering stop, and the completely unbelievable narrative begins. Disguising herself, Tracy goes to the bank where Joe Romano keeps a small checking account – the bulk of his money is kept elsewhere. Since she’s braless, the teller is too busy checking out her nipples to ask her for ID or even to make a phone call when she claims to be Romano’s secretary and asks for some new checkbooks for him. You’d think people would be more careful when handling a known mafiosi’s money, but maybe Tracy’s nipples are just that good. Tracy then tears out the deposit slips in Romano’s checkbooks and puts them into the baskets of blank deposit slips used by customers who have forgotten their own checkbooks. She then sits back while money is automatically funneled into Romano’s account. It’s interesting that she doesn’t spare even a thought for people who might need to deposit their paychecks into their own accounts, people who might be trying to support their families on the money that she steals. She believes that the bank will sort out the mix-up, but how will the people from whom she has stolen manage until then?
Still, come on, this is about revenge. And she’s so beautiful. Let’s not get hung up with all those deep philosophical concepts of morality and ethics and what-not.
Pretending to be Romano’s girlfriend, Tracy calls Orsatti and claims that her lover has been salting away money. Exit Romano. She then cooks up an elaborate plan to make Orsatti think that the crooked lawyer is cheating during their weekly poker game, though we are not told how she knows that they have a weekly poker game. Maybe it’s in the Mafia Manual. Exit lawyer. Then she finds out that the judge is in Moscow, so she writes telegrams to him using a code which makes the NKVD think that the judge is a spy. The code is one where every fourth word is underlined (with some of the sentences painfully twisted to achieve the desired effect). Yes, I can see the brilliance of this, especially since it uses none of the ciphers, nulls, security checks and other annoying minutiae of cryptography. After the NKVD has presumably finished laughing its collective head off at the bungling amateur (and I don’t mean the judge), the universe operates in Tracy’s favor once again, and the judge is sentenced to fourteen years’ hard labor in Siberia. Exit judge. This puts Anthony Orsatti’s cosy operation in jeopardy, so exit Orsatti. Get used to the pattern, folks – all this time, Tracy couldn’t win, and from now on, Tracy can’t lose. It’s a toss-up as to which is more boring.
With so many people falling over their feet to participate in her little schemes, I suppose Tracy could be forgiven for confidently believing that she will return to her old job in the bank. She doesn’t even call the vice-president first to let him know she’s coming to see him. Prior appointments? What are those?
“Hello, Mr. Desmond. Well, I’ve come back,” Tracy said brightly.
“What for?” His tone was unfriendly. Decidedly unfriendly.
It caught Tracy by surprise.
I can certainly see why. Doesn’t he read Time, Newsweek or People? Doesn’t he know that she’s the most beautiful ex-convict ever? Tracy suggests that he give her her old job back. I must have missed the part where he assured her that they would keep that job open for the next fifteen years she was supposed to be in prison, but fortunately Mr. Desmond seems to have retained his sanity; injecting a note of realism into the proceedings, he explains to Tracy that the customers might not be too happy dealing with someone who spent time in the penitentiary for attempted murder. Tracy is sad. I’d be sad too, if I was such a twit.
Tracy goes for dinner and sees her fiance across the room with his new wife. Fortunately, we are spared another Tracy-deceives-the-gullible-yet-again story, since time has apparently wreaked greater vengeance upon the fiance than she could.
She was seeing a sallow, drawn-looking, middle-aged, balding man, with stooped shoulders and an air of ineffable boredom on his face.
Maybe he was reading this book. Tracy then steals some money she believes she is owed from the bank, since they haven’t changed their computer access authorization code. Disgruntled employees? What are those? Sidney Sheldon doesn’t seem to have realized that there’s a difference between making the hero clever and making the villains lobotomized. Since Tracy can’t get a job anywhere, thanks to “the men upon whom she had exacted vengeance” (no mention of her own stupidity in going after a mafiosi with a gun), she turns to Conrad Morgan, a jeweler who specializes in appropriating the jewelry that he has sold to his “extremely wealthy clientele” once said clients go on holiday. He wants her to break into the house of one such client.
“If you have any scruples about the robbery hurting Mrs. Bellamy, you needn’t have. She’s really quite a horrible woman, who has houses all over the world filled with expensive goodies. Besides, she’s insured for twice the amount the jewels are worth.”
And that makes it all right. By this logic, one could break Nancy Kerrigan’s knee all over again with a clear conscience, because the dear lady has no doubt got them both heavily insured by now. Anyway, I suppose this is meant to assure us that no one is going to come after Mr. Morgan with a gun, because, you know, he only defrauds bad people, as opposed to nice ladies with beautiful daughters.
When Tracy had left, Conrad Morgan sat in the dark office, thinking about her. A beautiful woman. Very beautiful indeed.
I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten what Tracy looks like. Would you mind repeating it about twenty times more, Mr. Sheldon? How kind of you. Now, on with the story.
Disguising herself, Tracy breaks into Mrs. Bellamy’s house, where she sees a portrait of her victim – a “horrible woman” with a “hard, arrogant look”. Such people might as well tattoo “Please Rob Me” on their foreheads, right next to their Mark of the Beast. As Tracy grabs the jewels, the burglar alarm goes off, but she distracts the cops by answering the door in a sheer negligee, with her face covered by a mudpack. She claims she’s a houseguest, and her nipples presumably do the rest of the talking. As she returns to Conrad Morgan with the jewels, he sends another thief, Jeff Stevens, to try to get them off her, but Tracy outcons him.
Tracy Whitney was without doubt the most beautiful woman Jeff Stevens had ever seen. And clever.
Jeff certainly has his priorities straight. Lest there were any doubts that he was the hero, the book segues into a flashback chapter that should be entitled “Lifestyles of the Rich and Credulous”, showing how Jeff, who was once married to a wealthy woman who didn’t want to have babies with him (how unnatural!), conned his in-laws out of $250,000. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You see, the in-laws had a scheme where they sold inferior meat as prime, and we all know it’s very wrong to cheat people. So Jeff sold them a mathematical computer called SUCABA, which they bought sight unseen, and no one ever even dreamed of reversing the letters of that name. I think that if the author turned Jeff loose in a kindergarten, he could and would con all the little kids out of their lunch money, but right now, I’m just twiddling my thumbs through the tedium, waiting for him to meet up with Tracy again, followed by sex, love, marriage, yada. Tracy, of course, has her own justifications of her behavior.
I’ve gone from being an innocent, naïve victim to a… what? A thief – that’s what… No. An avenger. That’s what I’ve become.
I’ve written about people who stole left and right, so I have nothing against such characters, and a good author can make protagonists sympathetic no matter what their vices. However, pretence and self-delusion do not an admirable character make. Still, I’ve given up expecting anything from Tracy except the adjective “beautiful” and the ability to fool the terminally stupid of this world, so on with the tale. Tracy decides to take a cruise on the QE II, where Jeff Stevens, Boris Melnikov and Pietr Negulesco also just happen to be sailing. Melnikov and Negulesco are chess grandmasters traveling to an international tournament, and they both have the nerve to displease Tracy. Melnikov literally runs into her when he’s jogging, and doesn’t apologize. Negulesco then calls her “beautiful lady”, buys her a drink and puts his hand on her knee. Although by now Tracy should be used to the phenomenon of universal sexual arousal when she’s in the vicinity, she’s nevertheless peeved enough to don her cape and tights to become the Avenger, brave liberator of rich people’s money everywhere. Jeff collaborates on a scheme where she challenges Melnokov and Negulesco to an on-board chess match and plays both of them simultaneously.
My interest perked up a little at this, since I like chess. And then it turned out that this was one of those schemes which work brilliantly on the mentally retarded, since Tracy plays Melnikov (white) in one room and Negulesco (black) in the other. When one of them makes a move, she simply walks into the next room and copies it with the other man, so that they are, in effect, playing against each other. And not one of the gathered spectators notices this. Although Melnikov and Negulesco recognize each other’s style of play, they never wonder why Tracy always has to exit and enter the room before she can even move a pawn. Eventually, the game is a draw, and Jeff collects $200,000 in bets. Unfortunately, Tracy mistakenly believes he’s trying to steal her share of the loot. This is the Big Misunderstanding, which keeps our perfect-for-each-other leads apart until the (simultaneous) climax later on in the novel.
Tracy lives it up in London, shopping, dining, sightseeing and partying, before she realizes that her money isn’t going to last forever, so it’s time to play Robin Hood again, robbing from the ugly rich to give to the beautiful rich. This time, her victim doesn’t make a pass at her, but that’s only because he’s far too low to have even the rudiments of taste.
A $300,000 profit… With a villa and his own boat, he would be able to attract as many handsome young men as he liked… Gregory Halston was an atheist, but as he walked down the corridor of the Savoy Hotel to Suite 26, he found himself praying.
Oh, he’s not just gay, he’s an atheist. Well, in that case, take him for everything he’s worth. In fact, you might want to con him out of his kidneys as well, unless they don’t do transplants with the organs of gay atheists. Tracy is now “beautiful, intelligent and charming” as well as brave and wealthy – in fact, she has no flaws or problems whatsoever (except that she lacks True Love, and do you doubt that this too will drop into her lap eventually?). She’s also generous with her ill-gotten gains.
She set up a fund from which she made large, anonymous contributions to organizations that helped former women prisoners.
I wonder if that includes Karla Homolka.
There was one credo she lived by. She was careful never to hurt the innocent. The people who jumped at her swindles were greedy or immoral, or both.
Because it’s not at all greedy or immoral to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from people. Au contraire, this is such a sweet selfless action that I’m amazed they still have laws against it.
No one will ever commit suicide because of what I’ve done to them, Tracy promised herself.
I prefer honest indifference to this kind of holier-than-thou high ground. Anyway, I’ve never seen such a laundry list of Reasons Why Stealing Is Good. The victims are rude, arrogant, greedy, immoral, gay, non-religious (pick one or more), but the robberies will never result in a suicide, because rude, arrogant, greedy, immoral, gay, non-religious people never kill themselves. Plus, the victims are insured, and the insurance companies wouldn’t dream of increasing their charges because of a few thefts. Finally, she loves the challenge, and how could anyone be such a spoilsport as to deny Tracy her fun? Oh, and one last rationalization for the road.
Sometimes life can be unfair, she thought, and it’s up to us to even things out.
Now that we’ve established Saint Tracy’s credentials, it’s time for a few more grand larceny sprees. She steals a Goya painting from a museum, even though the curator didn’t make a pass at her. Jeff, however, steals it from her and gets the profit, making Tracy bitterly angry; this kind of thing is only supposed to happen to rude, arrogant, greedy, etc. people. However, she and Jeff have to cooperate once again, this time to take a package of diamonds from a plane in flight. Tracy is smuggled into the cargo hold, but while she’s there, she feels feverish, dizzy and nauseated. Naturally, she steals the diamonds, but she collapses in front of Jeff with what I’ll call Sheldon’s Syndrome, an as yet unnamed illness cured by stripping the person naked and sponging them down. This is, of course, the Hurt-Comfort Scenario so beloved of romance novelists, and it’s Jeff’s opportunity to reveal his True Feelings for his partner in slime. I mean, crime.
“Time to take your temperature,” he said briskly.
All right, but could you put some Vaseline on the bulb this time? Jeff feeds her, dresses her, entertains her and does everything but paint her toenails, so naturally they have mind-blowing sex, and in the morning he asks Tracy to marry him. Because, you know, it’s one thing to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from people and quite another to sleep with the heroine without making a commitment. She’s definitely right for him, though; she doesn’t have any in-laws to defraud. There’s one last larceny, during which Tracy gets the better of her, uh, nemesis, an insurance investigator called Daniel Cooper, who has been following her around like the cartoon version of Inspector Clouseau tailing the Pink Panther. I never expected him to succeed, since he’s described as unattractive, fat, androgynous, bitter, antisocial and sexually obsessed with Tracy, which is par for the course. He also killed his mother. I think this caricature is supposed to show anyone unfortunate enough to be reading the book that there are worse crimes than Tracy’s (I mean, let’s face it, at least she’s not fat) , but by this time, I just didn’t care. Tracy and Jeff go on their merry swindling way, presumably to have babies as two-faced as they are, though the book ends with a typical scene – yet another fat middle-aged rich man making a pass at Tracy. Maybe the sequel can deal with how she and Jeff hunted down and neutered all these people.
While this genre demands a narrative that doesn’t require much brainpower to grasp – and If Tomorrow Comes fulfils that, being as simplistic as possible – it also doesn’t require a degree in philosophy to recognize self-righteous hypocrisy when one sees it. Sheldon can do better than this. In his novel Master of the Game, the protagonist also plots revenge against a man who destroyed his life, but the hero of that book didn’t spend any time patting himself on the back for his behavior (and he doesn’t end up happily ever after, either). In contrast, the sweet shallow protagonists of this novel have it made, though that’s only everyone else become stupid, incautious or oversexed to the point of utter distraction around them. The flat, repetitive style doesn’t quite mask the characters’ utter lack of conscience, and if I wanted that kind of thing, I’d read a Thomas Harris novel. At least that would not be so boring.