Master of the Game

Master of the Game (1982), a thriller by American writer and television producer Sidney Sheldon, follows Kate Blackwell as she inherits the business founded by her father, Jamie McGregor, turns it into a multinational empire, and struggles to choose one of her children as her heir. Master of the Game spent four weeks in the number one spot on the New York Times Best Seller List and was adapted for television in 1984. After Sheldon’s death, his publisher commissioned a sequel, entitled Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress of the Game, written by Tilly Bagshawe.

The novel opens on the 90th birthday party of Kate Blackwell, the matriarch of her wealthy family and owner of the vast business empire of Kruger-Brent International. The aging Kate has a vision of her personal dead: They invite her to join them, but she refuses, on the ground that she still hasn’t found an heir to preserve her legacy.

The novel moves back in time to the 1860s. Adventurer Jamie McGregor leaves his native Scotland to seek his fortune in Klipdrift, South Africa, where diamonds have been discovered. On arrival, he is swindled out of his savings and left to die by local merchant Salomon van der Merwe. However, Van der Merwe’s African servant Banda saves his life. Together they plot revenge against their mutual enemy. First, they steal a huge haul of diamonds in a risky heist. Next, Jamie—by now unrecognizable—returns to Klipdrift, to seduce van der Merwe’s daughter, Margaret. Once she is pregnant, Jamie reveals his identity and Margaret’s secret at once, humiliating van der Merwe in front of his pious neighbors.



Still, Jamie is not done with his enemy. With his stolen fortune, he establishes a successful company, Kruger-Brent, and invests heavily in the town, secretly taking over its bank. Having driven van der Merwe into debt, he calls in everything van der Merwe owns as collateral, ruining van der Merwe and driving him to suicide.

Margaret tries to get Jamie to take responsibility for his son. When he refuses, she leaves Jamie Jr. on his doorstep. As he takes care of the baby, Jamie grows to love his son, and he agrees to marry Margaret, solely in order to legitimize the boy. However, one night, he drunkenly mistakes Margaret for his lover, and she conceives again, giving birth to a daughter, Kate.

The Bantu rebellion breaks out. Banda rescues Kate, but Jamie Jr. is kidnapped and killed. Jamie’s grief causes him to have a stroke. Margaret cares for him and takes over his business, running it jointly with Jamie’s former lieutenant, David Blackwell.



During the Boer War, young Kate is kidnapped. Her feeling of helplessness makes her resolve that in the future, she will be powerful. She falls in love with David Blackwell—20 years her senior—and resolves that she will take over the company after Margaret’s death. However, when Kate returns from business school, she finds David engaged to a woman who wants him to take over her own family’s company.

Kate ruthlessly manipulates David into breaking his engagement and marrying her instead. World War I breaks out and Kate moves into the arms industry. David tries to stop her, but when he enlists and goes overseas, she begins production anyway. David is displeased, but Kate realizes that the company’s fortunes are more important to her than her marriage. When David is killed in a mining accident, Kate prematurely gives birth to their son, Tony.

Kate turns Kruger-Brent into a multinational giant, but Tony shows little interest in the business. Instead, he wants to be an artist. Kate agrees to let him study in France, on condition that if he fails, he will return to run the company. Tony is talented, but Kate pays a leading critic to pan his first exhibition, and Tony returns in shame to follow his mother’s wishes. During his stint at the company, Tony learns that his girlfriend in France, Dominique, was a Kruger-Brent employee hired to spy on him. He leaves the company, cutting all ties to Kate.



Recognizing that Tony is not going to be the heir she craves, Kate manipulates him into marrying a German heir, Marianne Hoffman, so that his children will be the heirs to two powerful companies. Marianne learns that she is liable to die in childbirth, but Kate persuades her to ignore this advice, and Marianne dies giving birth to twins. In his grief, Tony learns that Kate is to blame for his wife’s death. He also learns from Dominique that his mother sabotaged his exhibition. He has a psychotic break and tries to kill Kate. He is arrested, lobotomized, and sent to an institution. Kate gets her wish to raise Tony’s twin daughters, Eve and Alexandra.

Eve is manipulative—in fact, psychopathic—while Alexandra is a sweet, loving girl. Kate chooses Eve to take over Kruger-Brent, until discovering that Eve has tried to murder her sister, Kate disinherits her entirely. Eve meets another disinherited child, George Mellis, and together they hatch a plot: George will marry Alexandra and kill her, leaving Kate no choice but to reinstate Eve. George marries Alexandra, but Eve taunts George so cruelly that he beats her almost to death. A talented plastic surgeon, Keith Webster, repairs her face so perfectly that she still exactly resembles her twin.

Eve, pretending to be Alexandra, murders George. The police build a case against Eve, which hinges on the accuracy of her reconstructive surgery. Dr. Webster, holding the crucial piece of evidence, uses it to blackmail Eve into marrying him. She immediately begins cheating on him, and Webster punishes her by disfiguring her face during a routine laugh-line removal. Meanwhile, Alex marries George’s psychiatrist and they have a son, Robert.



This brings us up to the present. Eight-year-old Robert is a musical prodigy. Kate tries to push Robert toward business, but Alexandra and her husband insist that she must allow him to choose his own path. Kate relents, offering to introduce Robert to a famous musician, as she once offered to help Tony.