And when Stash dies in a plane wreck, gorgeous teen Daisy is rape/seduced by hateful Ram (who now controls the family fortune)-and escapes to college in Santa Cruz, where her theater design work leads (via a corny sequence reminiscent of a Judy Garland/ Mickey Rooney musical) to a job in N.Y. When Francesca soon dies in a car wreck, however, little Daisy lives luxuriously with Stash (and older half-brother Ram) in London while beloved sis Dani goes into an institution. But it's a grueling, traumatic, premature childbirth-twin girls, one perfect (Daisy), one brain-damaged (Danielle)-and when fastidious Stash tries to fob off the retarded babe, lioness Francesca grabs both tots and flees to California, along with a loyal Russian nanny and some FabergÃ baubles. The story proper begins with the whirlwind romance of 1950s filmstar Francesca Vernon (whose brief career implausibly seems to consist of classics only: Hamlet, Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights) and Russian-blooded, Swissbred Prince Stash Valensky-a polo-playing, plane-flying womanizer (his flashback seduction by an older woman at age 14 is the book's sexiest sequence) with ''the hands of a great male animal.'' They meet in Deauville, it's Technicolor at first sight, their first date is lust on horse blankets at his stable, and-zap-they're married and Francesca's pregnant.

Well, then, is it at least a good, juicy, junk-read? Answer: so-so, no better or worse than Scruples (1978), with some crude but effective soap-operatics at the start that soon slide into chaotic, glittery servings of romance, sex, and the advertising biz. The obvious first question: is there anything about this novel to explain the astronomical sums that have been paid for it? Answer: not even close.

Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz