Tracy Whitney is a kind of a woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly; a woman who wouldn’t pick a tissue out of the the next person’s table. What happens when she is sentenced? Our heroine gets framed and she vows to exact revenge. Sounds like right out of a Bollywood film, huh?
The Story...
The novel follows the story of Tracy Whitney, a bank employee who is framed. Being a very soft spoken woman, that brings her castles crashing down. She gets thrown into the pen - short for penitentiary (which is considered hell) where she manages to survive by the skin of her teeth. Her good behaviour gets her a term cut just as she is planning to escape. However, her bank refutes any claim to her money and thus begins the criminal life of Tracy Whitney - with a false withdrawal on the bank, equal to the amount she was owed.
What starts as a conquest for justice, ends up being a mere hobby and finally culminates into a fulltime cut-throat competitive business. Shee meets the man of her match in Jeff Stevens, a smooth-talking con-artiste. The initial tussles between the two, give way to a secret feeling of love; maybe that’s why they say, opposites attract!
Sheldon delves deep into Tracy’s life and her psyche at all times. As is the case with everyone of his central characters of a novel, Tracy Whitney too, is given full justice. Sheldon gives a (perfect-ten) creator’s account of her psyche and makes her act exactly as such a developed psyche would act. He does a thorough job of researching into women’s mentality. Probably, that’s as close anyone got to understanding a woman’s internal logic!! (which, incidentally, no one but the creator can understand!!)
The story zips through various plots and situations with the ease and the finesse of a Da Vinci’s artwork. The sub-plots are tightly built and allow no escape routes. The readers are kept tied by a chain of plots which never allow any other reading to creep in. That, however, works
on the flip-side, too. Being a novel with essentially inherent small plots, one can take off a day to read them one by one, for instance the jewellery loot on a monday, the stevens affair on a tuesday, The Goya ’Puerto’ swindle on a Wednesday... and so on!!
Sheldon is no doubt amazing when it comes to blending sex with books. He makes all other books look like crude oil in such matters. Ther’s not much to talk about that except that it is seen only in the last few pages of the book. Maybe, this is his only book in which such little dosage of his famous sex-potion is used.
The End Result...
For all those Sheldon fans, this is a little off-the-track Sheldon novel and whatever I say it is not gonna stop you from acquiring it. So, go ahead.
For the rest of the gang, I’d say go ahead read it once, if it suits your style, fine, enjoy!