The Carpetbaggers is a roman a clef, and the main character Jonas Cord is an obvious portrait of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes — in his earlier, more active years. Robbins is a master of the roman a clef mode, giving his readers more than enough information to make the connection but then improving on prurient curiosity with a fictional closure that explains (and explains away) just how Cord became such a hard-driving and hard-driven character. The real Howard Hughes had no daughter to disown mistakenly, but Cord's discovery of his mistake provides effective closure for this complex narrative. Robbins never settles for reminding the reader of a real person; he always follows this created character through to his logical development in a clearly orchestrated plot.

After Jonas, the most striking character in the book is perhaps Rina Marlowe, a conflation of Jean Harlow (for the unfortunate sex life...