The Paper Dynasty - Hardcover

Duffy Durham Sutler built the Theater Arts Center downtown after all the men and their numerous ballot bond issues failed. A crisis in her fund drive developed. She was short of the goal she promised the County Supervisors to ensure their indispensible participations. She was having lunch at Perino's when:

She went back to the dining room where she had spotted two oil men having lunch. They were friendly rivals who Duffy knew loved to get the edge on each other. One was J.Karl Gittens, tall and introverted, blond, tassel-like hair resting on his gold-rimmed glasses: the other, Hugh Penza, huge and jolly, balding, always smiling, always scheming.

Karl wore a navy blazer with an irrelevant crest on the left breast, gray slacks and a solid gray tie. Hugh Penza wore a western jacket, string tie with a silver clasp on the black strings and a rumpled white shirt straining at the buttons.

"Hello, gentlemen," Duffy said.

"The Queen of the Tribune," Hugh Penza said. "Sit down, dear. Have a drink with us." J. Karl fidgeted. He didn't really want the company.

"Well if I'm not intruding on anything." She sat with a smile of contentment before there was any time to withdraw the invitation.

J. Karl had that devastated "she's-going-to-put-the-touch-on-us" look on his face, but Penza was ever-jovial and made believe nothing could be further from his mind.

"What'll you have?" Hugh asked her.

"Oh, nothing, thank you," she said. "I just finished a big meal with the Markses."

"Yes, we saw," Hugh said. "Get anything?"

"We'll see," she said, usually noncommittal unless she had something substantial. "I'm in a real bind, boys," she said, "and I wonder if you could help me?"

"How much is it, Duffy?" Hugh asked.

"I'm three hundred thousand short of my initial promise to the board of supervisors. They simply can't wait any longer. I've got to get it by tomorrow. You have any idea where I could get my hands on that kind of money today?"

J. Karl spoke up, "You tried the Sutlers? They're the richest people in town."

Boardroom power struggles, scandal, murder, adultery, the heyday of immigrant California and the rise of Hollywood are ingredients of this big, old-fashioned family saga spanning five generations. Brazen, headstrong Civil War veteran Benjamin Raines Olin, hired as a printer's devil, transforms the four-page Los Angeles Tribune into America's largest newspaper empire. His future son-in-law, Arnie Sutler, an upstart from Vermont, will stop at nothing to push his way into the old-guard Republican WASP Olin clan, even poisoning his wife so that he can remarry. Later Arnie impregnates his secretary Theresa, whose true love happens to be his son Yank; when she dies in a suspicious bomb blast, Yank vows to destroy the family business, a mission that will consume Yank long after his hated father is dead. Olin Sutler, Arnie's Eastern-educated, liberal grandson, turns around the sagging paper's fortunes as he breaks down L.A.'s racial barriers. Gardner's robust saga provides crackling entertainment, even if the melodramatic plot travels in well-worn grooves, references to the Chandlerok family are scarcely veiled and the characterizations are often paper-thin.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.