Sleeping With the Devil by Suzanne Finstad

In this book, Barbra Piotrowski is the victim; Dick Minns is her hero/ruin. The story takes place mostly in Houston, Texas. It annoys me sometimes when an author spends too much time describing locations, but it’s hard to make that judgement when it’s a city I know. This book was intriguing beyond the crime angle because it describes Minns’s founding of an elite health club chain in the ‘60s called the President’s Club. (The clubs are now owned by Ballys and while they lack the columns and mineral baths of the originals, the beautiful people are still found sweating and flexing there.)

Barbra had a series of rough experiences – among them a rape and heroin addiction. Then she met the very charming and persistent Minns on an Aspen slope and eventually was lured to Houston to be his girlfriend.

H neglected to tell her he was still married. He lied to her, controlled her, chose her clothes for her: “I don’t like that. It’s not tight enough. Put on something tighter.”

He refused to let her get a job and was intensely possessive: “‘I’m so jealous,’ Dick had written, ‘of your hair dryer. Your every thought you think that isn’t me.’”

Finstad quotes friends of the couple throughout the book, describing Barbra and Dick’s relationship as unhealthy and strange. Perhaps they were being polite in their understatement. The word “addiction” is used often, and that seems accurate.

A savage divorce finally began, with Minns trying to convince his wife Mimi to stick with him. He couldn’t bear to lose any portion of his fortune. Barbra is hit, deserted, accused, suffers a miscarriage, and then takes Dick back. It’s almost sickening; it’s definitely pathetic and tiring.

The high point of the book revolves around a failed murder-for-hire plot that reeks of payoffs and cover-ups. Barbra ends up paranoid (probably with good reason), paralyzed from the chest down, and broke. It’s a bummer of an ending, no matter how much Finstad tried to make Barbra’s tragic story sound brighter.

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