Toxic Bachelors

August 22, 2005
When you've got three attractive men in a Steel novel, each determined to stay single, you can expect romance, love and marriage vows around the corner, as well as the usual mix of glamour, fashion and wealth. Charles Sumner Harrington, born to affluence, has no family and, following several botched engagements, is, at 46, a perfectionist who will probably never meet the woman of his dreams. Adam Weiss, a Harvard Law–trained hotshot, was burned by a nasty divorce; at 41, he is a sworn bachelor who parties with the pretty, young and clueless. Gray Hawk, a New York artist living hand-to-mouth at 50, was adopted at birth by globe-trotting, drug-taking rock stars; he's drawn exclusively to women whose middle name is "victim." The three friends take their annual summer Mediterranean booze cruise on Charles's luxurious yacht, and in the hubbub there and back in New York, each ends up crossing paths with a woman who turns his life upside down. After the initial bliss, there are confrontations, challenges and threats to promising relationships. Despite relentlessly reiterating her characters' Freudian backstories, Steel delivers the inevitable happy endings in the usual nontoxic, satisfying manner.