“Seducing a proper Bostonian was easy. Making him die of a heart attack a week after the wedding was hardly any trouble at all. Now she has money, social status, everything she has cunningly schemed to get since she was a poor little girl. Everything except the Brookline mansion and the multi-million dollar trust fund left to the three children. But what wicked stepmother couldn't get rid of three children? Jonathan, too smart for his own good and suspicious about his father's death, has to be the first to go. Then there's pretty, spoiled Verity, hooked on cocaine and perpetually drunk - who'd ask any questions if she died suddenly? And clever Cassandra, just out of college and beginning a career as a literary editor, will simply have to get over being dead.”
Much of Wicked Stepmother plays out like parody of early trashy Jackie Collins tales of the uber rich and their personal problems about how they can stay rich and what they’re willing to do make sure the money never dries up. Written by Michael McDowell in collaboration with Dennis Schuetz, it’s lacks the depth and breadth of Blood Rubies, but I think that’s the point. It’s supposed to by campy fun and neither writer disappoints. It’s a fast paced thriller, populated with characters that you either love, or love to hate. It has sex, drugs and rock and roll. It has money, power and real estate. It’s like Dynasty only classier.
It does come up short of being perfect, and everyone seems a bit blissfully ignorant about what is going on here, and then there’s a 20 bedroom house of unbelievable coincidence that begins to pile, which no one seems to gleam onto (the deaths don’t seem to pique the interests of the police), but the wry humor and social satire is makes up for some of it. But the naivety of the siblings is pretty staggering.
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