Conrad Black has launched an $11-million libel suit against Tom Bower, the author of 'Conrad & Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge', calling him "vindictive, high-handed, contemptuous, sadistic, pathologically mendacious and malicious."

Black alleges in his statement of claim that Bower's 436-page book is "evil and devoid of any redeeming or even mitigating qualities," reports the Globe and Mail.

He also alleges that Bower's book portrays his wife, Barbara Amiel Black, as "grasping, hectoring, slatternly, extravagant, shrill and a harridan."

The 43-page lawsuit, filed in a Toronto court last week, says Black has suffered damage from the book that includes "hatred, ridicule and contempt."

Bower's book was released last September in Canada and Britain. It was also released in the U.S., under the title 'Outrageous Fortune: The Rise and Ruin of Conrad and Lady Black'.

Since the release, Black has not been shy about attacking the book.

In an article in London's Sunday Telegraph last October, Black said Bower's "key-hole, smut-mongering side-piece portrayal of my wife as a man-eating sex maniac prior to her marriage to me is disgusting."

Last week Black told the Globe that he was going to file "the mother of all libel statements of claim."

In the suit, Black mentions more than 50 examples of alleged inaccuracies and defamatory statements in the book.

In one example cited by the Globe, Black alleges that Bower falsely describes him as "a religious hypocrite or crank who delusionally imagines conversations with God in which he believes he receives reassurances about the divine acceptability of illegal and immoral actions."

Black also takes issue with Bower's description of Amiel Black as "a Nazi apologist" who is "barbarously rude to domestic staff."

"She is falsely accused of flying to London to have lunch with former U.S. president (George H. W.) Bush and generally of being a domineering, vulgar, obsessively materialistic and altogether repulsive personality,'' alleges the suit.

Black also names the publisher of the book, Harper & Collins Books of Canada Ltd., in the suit.

London-based Bower, who has written other controversial biographies, has faced lawsuits in the past. He wrote two biographies about British newspaper baron Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991, and received a similar response.

"Robert Maxwell sued me many times and look what happened to him,'' Bower wrote the Globe in an email.

In response, Black wrote in another email:

"I'm not concerned with his reaction; he's gambling on a verdict in Chicago that is almost impossible to be obtained... I'm looking forward to his interrogation under oath."

Black goes on trial in Chicago in March to defend himself against allegations that he and three other executives of Hollinger International Inc. took more than US$80 million out of the company.

Black and the other executives have all pleaded not guilty to the charges.