Master of the Game
Sidney Sheldon
 The story begins with Kate Blackwell's ninetieth birthday celebrations in 1982 and is told in flashback. The story then moves one hundred years back to the arrival of Scotsman Jamie MacGregor (1865–1894) in Klipdrift, South Africa in 1883 to seek his fortune. He is soon defrauded by a wealthy Dutch storekeeper, Salomon Van Der Merwe, who steals his diamonds and leaves him in the desert to die. Jamie is rescued and taken to Cape Town by van der Merwe's Bantu servant Banda. Jamie plans his revenge, joined by Banda, who seeks vengeance for his younger sister who was raped and killed by Salomon. The two sneak into van der Merwe's heavily guarded diamond mines in the Namib Desert and succeed in stealing a load of diamonds worth a fortune. Jamie, now rugged and unrecognizable, returns to Klipdrift, cons Salomon into believing him to be a rich businessman and violates his daughter Margaret who gradually falls in love with him. However, when Jamie learns that Margaret is pregnant by him, he refuses to marry her and reveals to Salomon his true identity. The violation of Margaret's chastity becomes the talk of the town and Salomon plunges into depression and starts drinking; he soon commits suicide, an unhappy man. Jamie, initially, despises Margaret, but when she gives birth to a son, Jamie develops extreme fondness of his son and consents to marrying Margaret for the sake of their young son, Jamie, Jr. (1886–1893). Jamie creates a company called Kruger Brent (named after two guards who were calling each other in the diamond field) and pours all his attention into the business. At one point, after Kruger-Brent takes over the diamond mines, a young American named David Blackwell attempts to rob the mines in exactly the same way as Jamie and Banda did, but is caught by the guards. Jamie, feeling sympathy for Blackwell, gives him a job in the company. Jamie likes his determination and he works his way through the ranks becoming a Kruger-Brent executive. Banda, meanwhile, reunites with Jamie and informs him that he is using his share of the diamond fortune to discreetly fight against the government for Bantu rights. Over the years, Jamie finally abandons his vendetta, but never really loves Margaret. Instead, he falls for a young prostitute also named Margaret. He comes home one night drunk, and mistakes his wife for his favorite prostitute, and they make love. In 1892, Jamie and Margaret have a daughter Kate. A year later, Jamie, Jr. is mistakenly murdered in a Bantu uprising led by Banda, causing Jamie to have a stroke from which he later dies. Margaret takes over Kruger Brent to secure Kate's future and hires Blackwell to aid her. Kate grows up beautiful, strong-willed and manipulative. Having fallen in love with David Blackwell, who is 22 years older to her, as a teenager she is determined to marry him, and thwarts his engagement by buying the company owned by his fiancee's father. Kate and David later get married, move to NY and then David enlists in the army during World War I and is away for four years. He then returns home safe and later Kate becomes pregnant, but when she is seven months pregnant David is killed in a mine explosion, causing her to go into premature labor and give birth to a son, Anthony "Tony" James Blackwell (b. 1924). Like her father before her, Kate pours her life into Kruger Brent with passion, making it a global conglomerate. She naturally expects Tony to take over Kruger Brent, but Tony is more interested in becoming an artist. While he clearly has the potential to become a world-class artist, Kate secretly destroys Tony's career by paying a notable French critic to give negative comments on Tony's work because Kate strongly believes he is wasting his life as an artist and that there were "tens and thousands of painters in the world and my son was not meant to be one among them". Kate feels sad about Tony's disappointment and unhappiness but is determined to get him out of it. Kate later manipulates him into marrying Marianne Hoffmann, whose father owns a scientific patent she covets. The marriage is happy, but Marianne is told by a doctor that pregnancy is out of the question as she would be at risk for a stroke. When she tells Kate who is now a good friend of hers this, Kate is in denial about Marianne's condition and tells her that doctors could be wrong and to go ahead with a pregnancy. In 1950, Marianne becomes pregnant, but when she is taken to the hospital to give birth her blood pressure goes out of control and she has a stroke. An emergency Caesarian section is performed and twin girls are delivered, but Marianne dies before the second girl is delivered. Her doctor tells Tony that he had warned Marianne of the dangers but that Kate told her to ignore them. The incident, along with the coincidental revelation that Kate manipulated and ultimately destroyed his entire art career, drives Tony mad and he tries to kill his mother in revenge. She survives the gunshot wound, but Tony is committed to an institution. Kate is heart broken that her son felt this way about her but she is determined to survive. Kate takes in her two identical looking granddaughters, whom she names Eve and Alexandra, to raise. Eve, ruthless and cunning, sees Alexandra as an interloper and repeatedly attempts to kill her starting when they are young children, taking advantage of their identical looks. Alexandra is thought to be clumsy and accident-prone as they grow up and Kate clearly favors Eve as the heir apparent to Kruger Brent, but when Eve tries to implicate Alexandra in a sex scandal Kate realizes the truth about Eve and disinherits her, giving her only a small allowance and pays attention to Alexandra. She also does not tell Alexandra the truth about Eve but tells her that "Eve chose her own life". Enraged, Eve plots revenge against both her sister and grandmother. She meets George Mellis, the black sheep of a wealthy Greek family, and seduces him into helping her. Mellis is handsome and cultured, but he is also a violent sadist and homosexual. Eve, knowing this, holds it over his head as she reveals her scheme—to get Alexandra to fall in love with and marry him, after which he will murder her and cause Kate to die of grief. Cued by Eve, Mellis woos Alexandra by being the perfect man who loves all the things she loves, and Alexandra does fall madly in love with him and they marry. Eve continues to taunt Mellis, and one night he snaps and attacks Eve, brutally assaulting her. She eventually recovers thanks to the work of a talented but mousy plastic surgeon Keith Webster and uses the beating to get back into her grandmother's good graces. Kate melts and takes Eve back in and puts her back in the will, making Mellis superfluous. Eve changes tactics, fakes a scar, and begins visiting a psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Templeton pretending to be a depressed, suicidal Alexandra; the plan is that Mellis will take Alexandra out on a yacht where he will throw her overboard and make it appear as if she killed herself. When Mellis gets on the boat with whom he believes to be Alexandra, he instead finds Eve, who stabs him to death. In the course of the investigation Eve's plastic surgeon, Dr. Keith Webster, overhears a remark about the scar on Eve's head. Having fallen in love with her, he goes to her and reminds her that he left no scar and knows that she killed Mellis. When she tries to deny it, he offers her a deal—if they are married, he will not be forced to testify against her. Eve marries him but cheats on him flagrantly with a young actor. When the actor makes a joke about her laugh lines she demands that Webster repair them. Webster deliberately destroys her face and proves to be a master manipulator himself, making Eve completely dependent on him. Alexandra, meanwhile, falls in love with the psychiatrist Peter Templeton; they marry and have a son, Robert. The book closes at Kate's ninetieth birthday party with all her relatives present. Robert, now eight, is turning into a talented pianist. Kate sees him as Kruger Brent's heir but Peter laughs her off and asks her if she never gave up. Alexandra too tells Kate that she is happy doing whatever Peter wants. Looking around at her family, including Tony, who was released from the institution for the occasion, and a masked Eve, Kate still believes that she acted in the best interest of all and that it was she who has been cheated, even though everyone in her family has been negatively affected by her actions. In the last line of the book she tells her great-grandson, Robert that she would introduce him to the great musician Zubin Mehta. At this point the readers are left to interpret the ending - does she sincerely means it and has she really changed, or is she planning a repeat of what she did to her son Tony?