Queer Click-erature: Author Joe Keenan

Queer Click-erature Joe Keenan
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 – My Lucky Star – that in intricacy of plotting and brilliance of language rivals the best of Wodehouse.
The Plot
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 ends 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.
Marketed primarily to gay readers, Keenan deserves to win a large, appreciative audience of all sexual persuasions with this tour de force.
The order you should read Keenan’s books: Putting on the Ritz 1st, Blue Heaven 2nd, and My Lucky Star 3rd.

Jan 30, 2006 By Editor D 2 Comments