Goddess of Vengeance was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2012, and it marks a late-period Lucky Santangelo novel — Lucky is now established, wealthy, powerful, and facing a new kind of threat. Armand Jordan, a Saudi prince with a history of violence toward women, decides that he wants Lucky’s Las Vegas hotel-casino, The Keys. Lucky refuses to sell. Jordan is not accustomed to refusal, particularly from a woman.
The novel operates as a thriller — will Jordan’s escalating threats and violence succeed in forcing Lucky to capitulate? — but also as a meditation on different varieties of male power. Jordan represents inherited, patriarchal power: power that assumes female submission as a natural right. Lucky represents earned, female power: power that was won through intelligence, determination, and refusal to accept the roles assigned to women.
Collins wrote the novel in her seventies, and it demonstrates that her anger at the sexual double standard had not diminished with age. The violence that Jordan inflicts on women — and the impunity that his wealth and status guarantee — reflects Collins’s lifelong theme: that male power, unchecked, tends toward sexual exploitation, and that women who fight back are treated as the aggressors.
Collecting Goddess of Vengeance
First edition (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2012): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $8–$20
- Without jacket: $3–$8