The V.I.P.s-Scott Poulson-Bryant

The V.I.P.s
Scott Poulson-Bryant
Broadway, Jul 5 2011, $15.00
ISBN: 9780767929745

In a hot New York, superstar rapper TNT arranges a meeting with Barry Chambers, Leo Bradford, Duke Maynard and Joey Ramirez; he does not tell any of them that he invited the others. Each has been successful since their childhood days when they called themselves the VIPs and had dreams of making it in the Big Apple. Thirty orgasms before turning forty Barry is the CEO of a giant cosmetics company; his ex is a paranoid NBA star, Leo is a magazine mogul and reporter; Duke is a former NFL star who has made it big since leaving professional football on the Internet; and Joey “Ram” Ramirez is "the Latino Calvin Klein" designer.

At the suite he took at the Hotel Gansevoort, TNT asks the quartet who amongst the four of them is his SOB father? Each is shocked by the question and begins to look back at their past transgressions.

The V.I.P.s is an engaging character study of four childhood friends whose mortality as they face forty is lucidly in their face by the rapper challenging them. The key cast is fully developed and each seems genuine with the exception of the vile villain. Although some of the relationships and decision making starting in 1983 between the parents generation of the V.I.P.s seem unlikely, this is a well written insightful tale as readers, the quartet and the rapper ask who his daddy is.

Harriet Klausner