My Lucky Star

In this hilarious, laser-sharp comedy, the Emmy-winning writer and producer of "Frasier" sends up Hollywood pretense higher than it's ever been sent before.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. In two earlier novels, Blue Heaven (1988) and Putting on the Ritz (1991), Keenan adapted and updated P.G. Wodehouse to his own original and side-splitting ends. Now, after a long hiatus largely spent as a writer and producer on the TV show Frasier, Keenan has produced a comic masterpiece that in intricacy of plotting and brilliance of language rivals the best of Wodehouse. Keenan sends his down-on-their-luck heroes--ordinary guy and narrator Philip Cavanaugh; Philip's unscrupulous pal and former lover, Gilbert Selwyn; and their brainy friend, Claire Simmons--to Hollywood, where Philip winds up helping aging has-been movie star, Lily Malenfant, pen her scandalous memoirs. In fact, Philip has been hired as a spy by Lily's more successful actress sister, Diana, and Diana's son, Stephen Donato, a closeted male action star, who both have good reason to fear the dirt Lily plans to dish. Enter the boys' nemesis from Blue Heaven, Moira Finch, and their fortunes plummet in a series of misadventures involving blackmail, male prostitutes, impersonating a police officer, and a sex act caught on videotape that's as audacious as it is hilarious. By the end, a vindictive DA thinks he has Philip and Gilbert at his mercy, but of course he didn't reckon with Claire, who comes up with a solution to their troubles worthy of that which Jeeves uses to save Bertie's neck in The Code of the Woosters. Hitherto marketed primarily to gay readers, Keenan deserves to win a large, appreciative audience of all sexual persuasions with this tour de force.