Best known as the basis for the classic film starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, and soon to be a major Broadway musical, Sweet Smell of Success is a dark and gripping novelette about media manipulation and the will to get ahead - by any means necessary. Lehman scathingly depicts the dark side of success through the twisted relationships of Sidney Falco, an ambitious publicist, and J J Hunsecker, a powerful and vindictive gossip columnist, fashioned after Walter Winchell. As scandals are manufactured and reputations ruined for sport, the story spirals downward toward one last, savage act of revenge.
