Summary: One word - Vengeance. With a capital V. An "In Your Face", over the top grandiose exposition of Vengeance, with a steaming side order of ruining someone's life over the course of a couple of decades.
Setting: Europe and the United States, between the 1930's and the late 1940's.
Plot: Standard Sidney Sheldon fare; an exceptionally written, internationally set, character based drama. Noelle gets jilted by a US pilot who's on temporary assignment to the RAF. She spends the next few years plotting how to get even with him, then delivers on her promise (with a truly surprising Sheldon twist). It's hard to classify Noelle as the antagonist or protagonist in this story; she's definitely a "bad" character (the story opens with her on trial for murder), but she's been forced into her circumstance by her (sometimes naive) dealings with other characters. I was rooting for her by halfway through the book, and trying to guess how she would deliver her vengeance to the aforementioned pilot. This book begins with the adventures of a handful of main characters through the turbulent time of France, England, the United States and Greece in the years and months leading up to the Second World War, and their story continues through the war, and a few years immediately following.
Criticisms: This book has only a few issues, mostly with what some of the characters are able to accomplish with limited resources. Some of the female characters are able to throw themselves on the mercy of handy benefactors who have obviously been inserted into the plot specifically for those purposes (if that makes any sense). There is some further development of those characters though, so he didn't completely forget about those characters once they'd accomplished what he'd originally needed them for. A few were obviously secondary creations though.
Wrap-up: Sidney Sheldon did a very good job with this book, one of his better ones. It was initially published in 1973, and while some of the terminology is quite dated, as a historical drama it performs within its internal time period fairly smoothly. The international settings are brilliant, and Sheldon demonstrates again how well his descriptions can be used to paint pictures that you can see and feel, almost more vibrantly than if you experienced them yourself. There are a few minor holes in the plot, but the stumbles are artfully concealed with reasonable explanations, given the time periods involved.
Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I would give this book a solid B+.
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