Obituary: Judith Krantz died on June 22nd

DISSECT ALMOST any novel by Judith Krantz (“Scruples” and “Princess Daisy” were the most popular) and you will find a tall leggy young woman with gorgeous hair, at least six steamy sex scenes—the raunchier the better—myriad words for colours (one sentence has “melting taupe, fawn, biscuit and greige” and that’s just for office furnishings) and a diminutive sidekick. Just as she herself measured only five-foot-two in her pantyhose, the sidekick is always a short-waisted, quick-witted, eternally loyal friend (Valentine O’Neill in “Scruples” and Kiki Kavanaugh in “Princess Daisy”) whose abiding passion is for beautiful, well-made clothes. When she is young and poor, she has to make them herself. Later, when she is rich—and she always makes a lot of money because she’s brilliant at business—she buys famous international brands or has her clothes made for her so they fit perfectly and make her look taller.

As a writer, friends came in many forms. Adjectives and adverbs were as precious to her as cashmere and silk. So were her loyal readers, who ignored the griping reviews (Angela Carter once described reading one of her novels as like being “sealed inside a luxury shopping mall whilst being softly pelted with scented sex-technique manuals”). Her fans disagreed. They bought 85m copies of her ten novels in more than 50 languages because they loved how her heroines were survivors, not only of incest or sexual abuse, but of being fat, looked down upon, left out. Hyperbole was another close friend. Faced with a sex scene she knew she had a choice: plough in or veer to one side. Plough in won every time, whether on a velvet chaise longue or a pile of horse blankets. If it seemed voyeuristic, that was the whole point.