A HABIT of failure unites Spin Cycle's three stars in an international rush towards destruction and renewal.

Friends Flox and Danny share an inability for success. First Flox fails, then Danny follows uncontrollably. While his friends' failure in love, work, home-owning and debt-handling is ultimately under his own control, Danny is led into this life while having no power over anything that is falling apart in his own.

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, previously successful actress Malory Cinnamon takes the failings of the other two and translates them to the life of the rich and the attention hungry.

Nick Duerden's second novel studies the spiral of self destructiveness, and how some can fail over and over again yet still come out winning.

It's a look at the poverty-stricken world of ambitious London, contrasted with the greedy, drug-fuelled and self-centred world of a Hollywood star whose ambition has been achieved and thrown away.

The narrative is furiously fast, as chaotic and fascinating as the out-of-control lives of the characters it centres on.

Duerden's references to the rich and famous of Britain and America are just subtle enough to stop those individuals taking legal action.

Updated: 09:36 Wednesday, April 17, 2002