Amazon.com Review
Dennis Hensley's
Misadventures in the (213) is like the best kind of gossip--something you might hear from a friend who heard it from a friend who knows someone who does Tori Spelling's hair--and it's just bitchy enough to be very, very funny. Aspiring screenwriter Craig Clybourn arrives in Hollywood and is soon sucked into a series of giddy escapades involving a phone book full of B-list celebrities and enough scandal to keep the most rabid "Melrose Place" fan happy (including a shocking case of watermelon abuse!) Craig's adventures were originally published as a monthly serial in
Detour magazine, and the episodic structure that this lends to the book only serves to keep the laughs coming thick and fast. From AIDS dance-athons to champagne glasses bearing Heather Locklear's lipstick,
Misadventures in the (213), paints a picture of life in L.A. that is both bizarre and true to life, thanks to Hensley's unique insider perspective. It's a fluffy, sugar-dusted, chocolate-dipped dessert of a novel with a cherry on the top, and if you have a sense of humor and an open mind, its charms are irresistible.
--Simon Leake
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In this comic novel of Hollywood's outer circle, essentially a book-length version of Hensley's (lightly fictionalized?) gossip column for Detour magazine, the in-joke is more than a gestureAit's a lifestyle. Celebrity-crazed Craig Clyborne has an edge over the other L.A. schemers and dreamers he hangs around with. His best friend is Dandy Rio, the sexually voracious, hilariously Machiavellian star of a new sitcom. The book's plot, which involves Craig's moving to Hollywood to peddle his script, is just a device from which to hang various sketches, mostly about Dandy scheming, alternately, to bed various stars (for example, Bill Maher, the host of Politically Incorrect) and to redeem her career, which, midway through the book, begins to bomb. Dandy is by far Hensley's most enjoyable creation: Craig's always-a-bridesmaid litany of disastrous dates (with a waiter, with the son of a game show host, with the star of a rock 'n' roll band) soon grows tiring. The novel's considerable gag sense and rapid-fire one-liners will be best appreciated by fanatics of TV trivia; others, especially those outside (213), may start to feel like intruders on an infernal party line.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
