Summer reading just got smarter
'Opinions differ as to whether the coalition plans to return us to the Eighties. What's indisputable is that the bestselling author in its ranks has shifted millions of books by staying loyal to the values and ambitions often thought to define the Thatcher years. Louise Bagshawe, since May the Conservative MP for Corby and East Northants, shone on the shelves thanks to a series of steamy romances, from Career Girls through Glamour, Glitz, Sparkles and Passion.
Her books cleverly blended chick-lit and bonkbuster as they sent can-do heroines on upwardly mobile quests for success in boardroom and bedroom, rewarded by big-ticket, designer lifestyles. Desire, a new novel which bolts the raunch and bling of the Bagshawe formula on to an international spy romp, appeared just three weeks before the election. That might have caused concern to some in her party if the author had ever pretended to be Ann Widdecombe. To her credit, she never for a moment has.
Bagshawe still sells well, as do the kind of novelists who fashioned the genres she combines: the bed-hopping, star-studded imbroglio à la Jackie Collins, or the luxury-brand feuding- family saga in the manner of Penny Vincenzi. However, this style of summer blockbuster increasingly looks as much of a period piece as a Dynasty-era coiffure or a Norman Tebbit speech'.
Read more at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/summer-reading-just-got-smarter-2041050.html