My Lucky Star

A hilarious Hollywood farce from the multiple Emmy-winning scriptwriter of Frasier and Producer of Desperate Housewives.

Keenan's command of the written word is as deft as the words he puts in other peoples mouths on TV... Ridiculously, almost criminally, funny... In Keenan's world, everyone is either morally corrupt, incredibly stupid or, in Moira's case, pure evil. And we should thank him for it. Because My Lucky Star may just be the funniest novel of the year... Unmissable.

This hilarious tale of naïve screenwriter Philip, lured to La-La Land by his amoral pal Gilbert. The manic twists and jibes at modern celebrity culture are a delight.

Comedy of a high order... This is sophisticated, deliciously camp entertainment

'Urbane wit and high comedy...run like quicksilver through the veins of My Lucky Star... A delightful, feel good, beautifully crafted romp... Laugh out loud funny... It is ingenious, unpredictable and wholly enjoyable'

Joe Keenan is a playwright, lyricist and the author of two previous novels, Blue Heaven and Putting on the Ritz. He wrote and produced Frasier for seven years, receiving five Emmy nominations for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series, and is now the Producer of Desperate Housewives. He lives in Los Angeles.

The luckless writing team of Philip Cavanaugh and Claire Simmons is lured to Hollywood by shifty pal Gilbert's offer of a lucrative screenwriting gig. The job proves even more ill-gotten than they'd feared, but then comes the news that the project will be graced by Hollywood royalty - imperious screen legend Diana Malenfant, her son the fantastically sexy (and secretly gay) megastar Stephen Donato, plus Stephen's hastily acquired wife, the lovely, if clueless, Gina. But with such Star Power on board how long before three newbie scribes are replaced by more seasoned hands? 
 
Unhappily - or perhaps, inevitably - the road to glory proves liberally strewn with land mines. Throw in the machinations of Moira Finch (an old adversary of Gilbert's) and our heroes soon find themselves centre stage in a rapidly escalating fiasco involving call boys, plagiarism, blackmail, a vengeful DA, bloodthirsty scoop hounds and the single most ill-judged sex act a married megastar has ever committed...

Blue Heaven

From Joe Keenan, chief scriptwriter of the award-winning Frasier TV series, comes an outrageously funny novel: an unholy cross between Armistead Maupin, P G Wodehouse and The Sopranos.

Blue Heaven... frothy, brilliantly coloured and packing a wicked satiric punch.

Blue Heaven is a hilarious read. Quote me with pleasure.

I adored it, laughing out loud on occasions as I read it at one sitting.

Joe Keenan has put the ‘high’ back into high jinks... refreshingly effervescent

Joe Keenan's first novel plunges headlong into a world of deceit, avarice and violence and it's all a scream - Keenan maintains impressive control over a wonderfully ludicrous plot-packed full of lines that are well worth memorizing - and with a finale that is staggeringly, hilariously contrived.

Joe Keenan has put the 'high' back into high jinks. His send-ups of criminal noveaux riches are biting and dead on - and his dialogue is refreshingly effervescent.

Joe Keenan was born in New York and lives in Los Angeles. Head Writer of hit US TV sitcom Frasier for the past decade, he is the author of two novels, Blue Heaven and Putting on the Ritz.

Meet Gilbert and Moira - the strangest couple to ever marry for each other's money. Living in New York in 1991 is Gilbert Selwyn, a young man possessed of boundless charm and an allergy to employment, who has devised a plan to wring a nice pile of loot from his mother's newest (and obscenely wealthy) husband. 
 
The scheme, simply put, is to get married for the gifts. But Gilbert, who's gay, needs a fiancée... Enter Moira Finch, a demonically conniving young woman whose own mother, having recently married the Duke of Dorsetshire, will contribute richly to the couple's receipts. Enter, too, Philip Cavanagh, Gilbert's longtime friend, former lover, and highly strung Best Man. And enter, finally, the Cellinis, Gilbert's huge internecine stepfamily, whose fortune has not been amassed as innocently as Gilbert first thought, and who conform rather more closely to Italian-American stereotypes than Gilbert would like to believe. As Gilbert, Moira, and Philip struggle to keep their plot under wraps, the scams get bigger and more perilous, deceit multiplies, and a wonderfully calamitous trail leads us towards what could be the wedding of the season.

Joe Keenan

Keenan writes like an uncloseted Coward. Not high-minded satire but somethign much rarer - pure-hearted camp

Following the hilarious debacle of Blue Heaven, librettist Philip Cavanaugh has again allowed himself to be drawn into a fiendish money-making plan by his friend and ex-lover Gilbert Selwyn. 
 
Gilbert has fallen in with Tommy Parker, a veritable Adonis and a magazine editor employed by media magnate Boyd Larkin. Philip's brief is to spy on Larkin's greatest adversary Peter Champion. To this end Philip enters the Champion entourage - a clan so poisonous they make the Borgias look Amish - with his songwriting partner Claire. Together they are to turn Champion's talentless wife Ilsa (a woman so rich she 'ovulates Fabergé eggs') into a chanteuse. 
 
As Philip and Gilbert out-spy each other in vying for Tommy's admiration, plot follows counter-plot in a novel whose comic complications, devastating repartee and cast of high-hat lowlifes is nothing short of dazzling and unforgettable.

Joe Keenan

Praise for Putting On The Ritz

made me howl with laughter - literally

Keenan writes like an uncloseted Coward. Not high-minded satire but somethign much rarer - pure-hearted camp

Books by Joe Keenan

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