Books like the stars' tennis balls

The Stars' Tennis Balls is a psychological thriller novel by Stephen Fry, first published in 2000. In the United States, the title was changed to Revenge. The story is a modern adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel The Count of Monte Cristo, which was in turn based on a contemporary legend.

The original title comes from a quotation taken from John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, which reads: "We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them." The novel is dedicated "To M'Colleague" (meaning Hugh Laurie, "M'Colleague" being the name by which Fry and Laurie referred to each other in their TV show A Bit of Fry and Laurie).

In 1980, Ned (Edward) Maddstone is a seventeen-year-old student, the sort of person for whom everything goes right. He is head boy, talented at sports, and following in the footsteps of his father towards Oxford University and a career in politics. A school friend, Ashley Barson-Garland, discovers that Maddstone read part of his diary and knows that Ashley is ashamed of his working-class roots. Barson-Garland plots to tarnish Maddstone's character with an arrest for drug possession. He enlists Rufus Cade, who is jealous of Maddstone's good looks and popularity, and Gordon Fendeman, the Jewish-American cousin of Portia, the object of Maddstone's affection with whom Fendeman is also in love (Fendeman also agrees with Portia's non-practising Jewish parents that she should not marry outside the faith).