VENDETTA: LUCKY'S REVENGE

VENDETTA: LUCKY'S REVENGE Jackie Collins (ReganBooks, $25) After 15 novels, Jackie Collins is pretty much a franchise unto herself. You know what you're going to get even before you turn the first page: gorgeous gals, hot tempers, sex, Hollywood foibles, sex, old-world Italian morality, sex, and -- just for effect -- guns and drugs and models and more sex. It's all in her latest installment in the saga of Lucky Santangelo, ex-Mafia princess, lusty adventuress, and now head of a Hollywood studio and mother of three. A wrench is thrown into her fairy-tale existence when a Chanel-clad rival named Donna Landsman appears on the scene and attempts to wreak some Sicilian-style vengence on our heroine by setting up the murder of Lucky's husband and stealing her film company. Lucky, however, will not be cowed, and with the help of friends -- the curvy rock star Venus Maria, the Latin movie star Johnny Romano, and the private investigator Boogie -- she sets about reassembling her world. Over the top it may be, but it all comes out right in the end. It's nice to know there are some things in this world you can depend on. A- -- Vanessa V. Friedman