When legendary Hollywood and Broadway press agent Geoffrey Putnam dies unexpectedly his lawyers inform C R Holloway that Putnam has bequeathed his notes for a tell all memoir with the implication that Holloway should get it published Surprised and flattered Holloway soon realizes Putnam s 21 legal sized pads though wildly bizarre and outrageously funny are a veritable snake pit of slander and rife for libel suits Privately Putnam referred to his favorite clients as his BCs and left his listeners to figure out the meaning of that titillating acronym Holloway s dilemma How to fulfill Putnam s final wishes and not get sued For more than a decade Holloway slaved over the handwritten pages and marginalia endeavoring to hone down the hyperbole parse the prurient and decipher the significance of BCs The breakthrough came when Holloway leased a second home in New Orleans storied Pontalba Apartments and began to assimilate that city s laissez faire attitude and exultation in the unorthodox Get out of the way it seemed to whisper Leave your small town judgments back in New Jersey On heeding The Big Easy s siren call the book finally took shape and with it the meaning of BC came into full focus The result is Wretched Excess nine loosely related short stories sure to enrage the aggressively pious raise the bar on Schadenfreude and delight all who take pleasure in harpooning the hypocritical ADVANCE REVIEWS Its style is crisp and pithy and very very funny Some of the lines are so clever that I read them twice and thrice over The religious satire is up there with Almodovar The Tennessee Williams cameo is a delight and the whole thing is a scream not so much Evelyn Waugh as Joe Orton at his wickedest Thanks for giving me that rare thing genuine laughs and real literary pleasure Thomas Wright Critic Author OSCAR S BOOKS Wretched Excess recalls my privileged youth sitting at the feet of various Hollywood spellbinders hanging on