(4 of 4)
Though he has taken pains to construct his literary persona -- a hard- drinking, drug-taking, fast-driving, womanizing hero -- this red-meat kind of guy has mellowed. He still chain-smokes Petit Nobel cigars, but he's given up cocaine and butter, and he even passes up cheeseburgers for chicken sandwiches. "P.J.'s image of himself is probably quite different from the public's perception of him," says friend Denis Boyles. "He might want to appear a bad boy, but I think the way he'd like to appear, sometime in his life, is as a Victorian gentleman." Readers should hope that never happens.