A gay man and a straight woman are going to get married for the presents. Funny at times but also seems to try to hard. The woman is the daughter of a duchess and the man has a step father in the mafia. It gets funnier as the book goes on with a drag queen mother and various other entanglements the duo enlist in their caper. ( )

Funny, but too mean for my tastes. (fat jokes abound, for example.) ( )

Joe Keenan was a huge force behind the tv show "Frasier" (both as a writer and producer) and you can see that here in the humor and dialogue of this homage to P.G. Wodehouse and screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s...great stuff...The sequel (_Putting on the Ritz_) is just as uproarious. Save both these books for a rainy day when you need a good cheering up!:) ( )

Unpleasant people (some gay) have sex and try to cheat one another. To Oxfam it goes! ( )

When Philip's friend Gilbert announces that he's getting married, he finds himself surprised by the news, since the groom is extremely gay and the bride is extremely... difficult. Life begins to make a little more sense when the happy couple confesses that it's all a scam to secure gifts from their rich relatives -- something that is apparently much more in character -- and Philip soon finds himself becoming an accomplice in the ever-more-complicated scheme. Needless to say, hilarity and hijinks ensue.

And "hilarity" is really not too strong a word. Both the back cover blurb and the person who recommended this book to me made comparisons to P.G. Wodehouse. I figured this must be an exaggeration, because, come, on, who can possibly compare to Wodehouse? But having read it now, I have to say it's a fair comparison. Gay 1980s New York may be a far cry from the world of Jeeves & Wooster, but the madcap plot is very, well, Wodehousian. So is the wonderfully witty writing, which sometimes had me laughing out loud multiple times per page. Basically, it's damned funny stuff. I must check out more of Keenan's work. ( )