HER STRONG SUIT AFTER ALL

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

AS A NOVELIST CHRONICLING THE world of the Rolexed and surgically enhanced, Joan Collins has always existed in the shadow of her prolific sister Jackie, who has tantalized readers worldwide with prose like, "Women were the enemy you either fought, outsmarted, or conquered. But there was something different about Montana." As if competing with that kind of storytelling flair weren't stressful enough, this winter the former Dynasty star suffered a particularly debilitating assault on her ego thanks to a bitter legal dispute with Random House over a manuscript editors claimed was just too dreadful to commit to print--and this coming from people who publish Marianne Williamson. Throughout the case, Collins suffered further indignity as newspapers ran excerpts from the rejected opus ("Don't call me your little cabbage, I'm nobody's cabbage"), excerpts she now says she would have eventually reworked. "I do a lot of revisions," she insists, adding pointedly, "I do a lot of revisions by myself."

The fruits of that kind of laudable hard work are all too evident in Infamous (Dutton; 308 pages; $23.95), published in Britain last year and just out in the States. Collins has been frantically promoting the novel--it's not the one rejected by Random House--on a seven-city U.S. tour. "Random House blackened my reputation," says the author, who ultimately won the $2 million-plus she claimed the publishing house owed her. "Now," she says--like so many struggling writers before her--"I need people to know that I'm good."

While no one will pick up Infamous and start faxing their friends on the Booker Prize committee, Collins has succeeded in turning out an entertaining and, more to the point, largely unembarrassing piece of fiction. Indeed, Infamous has all the ingredients of a respectably good-bad romance novel: boozy Hollywood parties, fights in Venice, sex in St. Tropez and a savvy divorce lawyer named Barry Lefkovitz. Our heroine is Katherine Bennet, a fortyish nighttime soap actress trying to live and love in a world she must share with so many Donna Millses--Infamous, one quickly infers, is based on the author's Dynasty years. Katherine stars on The Skeffingtons, in which her nemesis on- and off-camera is a nasty, sex-crazed blond who Collins insists was not inspired by Linda Evans. Does the book feel true to its world? Absolutely. Throughout, Katherine must juggle the burdens of paparazzi, baggy eyelids and a vile, bejeweled lover named Jean-Claude.

Beyond her knack for verisimilitude, Collins is capable, on occasion, of turning an adept cliche, as in "The portals of her heart were firmly locked against intruders." And contrary to what the Random House case might have us believe, Collins came up with these words largely on her own. Acknowledges Collins' British editor, Rosie Cheetham: "The amount of work I did on this book was not extraordinary." Not exactly a rave, but one suspects the author will take it.

--By Ginia Bellafante