Faces to Watch: Books

Susan Crosland
She's a household name in Britain, and if Random House has its way, she'll soon be one here. Novelist Susan Crosland — dubbed ''the thinking reader's Jackie Collins'' by The Times of London — set the British literary world abuzz in 1989 with her first novel, the thriller Ruling Passions. Now she has done it again with her second, Dangerous Games, just out in Britain and slated for May publication here. Crosland, 56, a veteran journalist (and widow of prominent Labour party figure Anthony Crosland), says the highly successful novelist-politician Jeffrey Archer cornered her at a dinner party in 1986 and told her that her style would lend itself well to fiction. She was then working on a biography of gentleman spy Anthony Blunt, but ''I just couldn't finish that book,'' she admits. ''And I was in debt — I'd already spent a third of my advance on a Porsche.'' So she took Archer's advice and wrote a novel instead. Like Passions, her new book is about the two worlds she knows best: journalism and politics. ''But it's not a political novel,'' insists Crosland, who's such an insider that she knows the colors of the sofas at 10 Downing Street. ''It's a melodrama. With a fair bit of violence and humorous sex thrown in.'' Sure sounds like politics.

Mark Newgarden & Drew Friedman
Individually and collectively, Drew Friedman and Mark Newgarden write and draw cartoons that aspire to ''be a little subversive'' (Friedman) and to ''go further than all the bland junk that's out there'' (Newgarden). Individually, they've contributed to National Lampoon and Spy; Newgarden, 32 (in glasses), invented the notorious Garbage Pail Kids, while Friedman, 33, recently published a hilariously meanspirited cartoon collection called Warts and All. Now they've teamed up to produce what seems likely to be 1992's wittiest gross-out, Toxic High, a sticker series from Topps. The idea, says Newgarden, was to depict ''a high school that has nothing to do with reality, yet expresses all the craziest fantasies and nightmares you have about real high school.'' Thus Friedman's artwork depicts, on one card, a museum class trip in which students spray-paint ''Teachers Stink'' over a Picasso; on another, a prim music teacher presides over an orchestra rehearsal in which all the players are drooling punk-rockers. Playing off kids' insecurities about their bodies, grotesquely goofy nerds and volcanic acne eruptions are recurring images. ''I hope the PTA groups are horrified, and kids love them,'' says Friedman. Just what are the taste boundaries, if any, on a project like this? ''Well, mucus and vomit were allowed, but no devil worship,'' says Friedman, ''and decapitation was okay, but no blood spurting out.'' ''Gunplay was a major thing to leave out,'' adds Newgarden. Well, all right, then — as long as you boys know the rules.
— Ken Tucker