Books: Robbins' Egg

THE ADVENTURERS by Harold Robbins, 781 pages, Trident. $5.95.

While Harold Robbins (The Carpetbaggers) was writing The Adventurers, Leon Shimkin, his publisher, took a peek at a half-finished page and asked what happened next. "I don't know," replied Robbins. "The damned typewriter broke. I'm waiting for a guy to fix it." Fixing the typewriter was Robbins' second mistake; the first was writing the book.

The Adventurers' international-jet-set subjects would confound a Zola. In the hands of Robbins they become like the projections of CinemaScope: highly colored, nine times larger than life, and relentlessly...

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