Believe me, I didn’t intend to watch...

Believe me, I didn’t intend to watch “Run Away With the Rich and Famous,” in which Robin Leach cannibalizes his own “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” presumably because the R&F; turn out to be as dull at home as cucumber sandwiches. I was, honorably enough, looking for the national news when I stumbled upon Beverly Sassoon (ex-wife of Vidal; her hair looked great) leading viewers on her personal tour of Italy. She ate at a tiny trattoria and then headed off for the legendary Terme di Saturnia spa, where, in her screaming neon-orange Body Glove bathing suit, she allowed an attendant to slather her with healing mud.

Why am I telling you this? Because when Sassoon isn’t traveling, she’s a writer, author of the novel Fantasies (Pocket Books: $18.95; 404 pp.) about a beautiful young model whose insatiable sex drive wrecks her marriage and almost destroys her life. It’s just the sort of novel readers love to play “guess who” with: Who’s the real-life counterpart of the middle-age magazine editor? Who’s the hairdresser? Who on earth is the model for Melon Tuft, girl journalist? Consider this: You might be happier not knowing.

What she’s done is sort of the literary equivalent of styling baby-fine hair--she may not have a lot to work with, but she’s got technique. Sassoon’s central character is Sloane Taylor, the world’s most gorgeous woman, who has an unnerving proclivity for anonymous sex in public places. Sloane lands at the apex of a romantic triangle with middle-aged multimillionaire Warner Bromley and powerful magazine editor Layla Bronz, and, by the time the blusher dust clears, Sloane has married the magnate, which sets the vengeance subplot spinning.

As if that weren’t enough, there’s the sadistic matador who makes Sloane see the light. She emerges the perfect contemporary heroine--the woman who nearly self-destructs, beats her addiction (after a suitably depraved interlude, to satisfy the voyeuristic reader), and lives happily ever after with her divorce settlement.

I’d just as soon not find out who any of these people might be modeled on.

I would like to know, though, the true identity of pseudonymous author Caroline Winthrop, who’s written Icons (St. Martin’s Press: $18.95; 356 pp.) about Judith, the distraught widow of a diplomat, who marries her dull stepbrother on the rebound and has an affair with a Russian, thus placing herself squarely in the center of a cold-war spy thriller. Why do authors--this one, according to the book jacket, “an established American writer of women’s fiction”--hide behind a phony identity? If said writer is ashamed of this effort, wouldn’t a rewrite be the more dignified solution? If she’s proud of it, why not say so? Or is she cheating on her publisher by having a fling with another house?

Perhaps the mystery is a selling ploy, a variation on the roman a clef: Instead of wondering who the characters are, we can wonder who the writer is. If she’s lucky, that will keep readers from dwelling on how quickly current events are passing “Icons” by, making it seem as dated as last week’s Beluga. This book was published a week after the first McDonald’s opened in Moscow, just as Gorbachev brought 70 years of history to a screeching halt with his proposal for a multiparty government. Yes, the CIA and KGB are still doing their logistical dance, and yes, Judith Marlowe is, at least, a feisty broad given to a nicely human catalogue of frailties. But it seems likely that cold-war dramas are about to be replaced by novels about entrepreneurial pioneers, or perhaps the Moscow branch of the Rainbow Coalition.

Reaching back in time, Beverly Gasner gives us The Girls at Lighthouse Point (E. P. Dutton: $18.95; 277 pp.), an extended speculation on what really happened to Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. According to Gasner’s fictionalization, the girl, here called Lucia, was dead when she was put in the car: Her public death was a carefully designed cover-up of her private demise, after too much booze, too many medications and a good old countercultural dose of hash brownies.

In “The Girls at Lighthouse Point,” the politician is a governor, one Justin Lambert, who makes the mistake of hosting a party that turns into a wake. In the interest of “damage control,” the revelers agree to lie about the circumstances of Lucia’s death, but when Lambert decides to reactivate his political career, 10 years later, they step forward to stop him. For Lambert also made the mistake of being born wealthy--which meant there were both hunting rifles and servants in his household, leading to an unfortunate adolescent accident that, taken alongside the more recent death, no spin doctor could fix.

Gasner is a Populist Fitzgerald, implying that the rich are, in fact, different from you and me--they’re more screwed up. While that might be soothing to those of us who go through financial gymnastics when the monthly bills come due, it seems, in this case, a rather cheap potshot.

Michael French’s Family Money (Signet: $4.95; 408 pp.) is a literal bargain for the paperback original, but cut-rate is as cut-rate does. French loads a tired plot (World War II: Frenchwoman marries dashing, rich American, learns money isn’t everything, and emerges adulterous, older, wiser) with cliches so old that they’re collectibles, if not officially antiques. She has the flawless complexion; he has the boyish good looks and brash, defiant optimism--and, if her lover happens to be a man of the cloth, everybody’s got to have a gimmick. Besides, he gets to deliver the immortal line, “Life in the Amazon is not likePalm Springs.”

Somebody ought to tell Robin Leach that. Maybe he could find a celebrity who wants to show us the difference.