Sidney Sheldon The Other Side Of Midnight Review May 2026

The Other Side of Midnight is not great literature. It is great pulp. It’s a decadent, morally dubious, and utterly addictive read. If you judge it by the standards of a 1970s airport paperback, it’s a five-star thriller. If you read it today, you’ll need to brace yourself for dated gender politics—but you’ll also struggle to put it down. For fans of twisty, melodramatic suspense with a dark heart, this is Sheldon at his absolute peak.

This is very much a product of the pre-#MeToo era. The male characters—especially Larry Douglas—are predatory in ways the narrative sometimes frames as roguish charm. Women are described almost exclusively through their physical attributes (“long legs,” “full breasts”), and sexual violence is used as a plot device without the weight it would carry today. The book’s morality is also slippery: revenge is portrayed as both tragic and, at times, almost glamorous. sidney sheldon the other side of midnight review

★★★★☆ (4/5) — A classic of its kind, flawed but unforgettable. The Other Side of Midnight is not great literature

The story follows two strikingly different women: Noelle Page, a beautiful, cold-blooded Frenchwoman driven by a pathological need for revenge against the man who abandoned her; and Catherine Alexander, a bright, idealistic American from a wealthy Chicago family. Their lives collide in a web of passion, deceit, and courtroom drama, centered on the charismatic but morally bankrupt pilot, Larry Douglas. The narrative jumps from the Greek islands to Paris, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., building toward one of the most famous—and shocking—endings in popular fiction. If you judge it by the standards of