From Publishers Weekly
Dunford's riotous and rollicking novel is infused with added wit and verve thanks to actor Mitchell Anderson's (Relax... It's Just Sex; Party of Five) virtuoso performance. Mining every comedic possibility from the smart dialogue and delightfully convoluted plot twists, Anderson plays all the characters in the book with lightning-fast agility. The novel unfolds as Mitchell Draper, a gay Toronto office temp and would-be screenwriter, sits at his typewriter chronicling his misadventures as they develop. The book's style adapts perfectly to the audio format. Mitchell's big break comes when Carmen Denver lumbers up his stairs (sounding like Mike Meyer's Linda Richmond/Cawfee Tawk character) and offers him a chance to script her top-secret blockbuster. When Mitchell's pals, coffeehouse manager/painter Ingrid and health food store clerk/actor Ramir, each experience a turn of good fortune, it looks like everyone will enjoy a happy ending. But that's when the complications start, and the laughter builds as Mitchell discovers that the Mafia Princess-like potboiler he's writing to Carmen's specifications is not fiction. Another top production from fledgling Fluid Words. Simultaneous release with the Alyson paperback original (Forecasts, Sept. 18). (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Ah, to be young and resilient again! In this amusing divertissement, a young, gay, aspiring screenwriter in Toronto and his friends get caught up in mystery, danger, and romance when our hero takes on his first (dubious) commission. Mitchell Anderson has just the right light, chatty approach to this fare, to which he adds considerable expressiveness. Though he may misinterpret a nuance here and there, he keeps the listener engaged throughout. Judiciously used sound and music complement his reading and add to the humor. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Dunford's winning, lightweight read is tongue-in-cheek charming. It poses this existential question: Can three Gen-X Canadian friends--Ingrid, a painter who works in a coffee shop; Ramir, an actor who works in a health-food store; and Mitchell, an aspiring screenwriter who temps a lot because he types 97 words a minute--find artistic expression and success without getting killed? No joke. Mitchell has been followed ever since he agreed to write a screenplay for the elusive Carmen Denver, who's producing a crime thriller she claims will upset a lot of people. This wanna-be screenwriter, who also writes gay porn, has been pining for Ramir, who's determined to produce his own one-man multimedia show in Ingrid's coffee shop, which is fast becoming a gathering place for art groupies since her first show of paintings there sold out. Of course, everything that can go wrong does, producing more laughter than thrills and chills in this highly enjoyable comic mystery. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


"One of the best fun reads of all time."


"One of the funniest and most shamelessly entertaining novels around."

SYNOPSIS

"One of the funniest and most shamelessly entertaining novels around," wrote Now Magazine about Warren Dunford's hilariously off-kilter novel of friendship, artistic ambition, and organized crime. Originally published in Canada to widespread acclaim, Dunford's Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture has finally crossed the border. Stirring elements of screenwriting, thriller fiction, ironic self-examination, and urban street smarts into an oddly invigorating postmodern stew, Dunford's novel drops the reader into the lives of Mitchell Draper, screenwriter/office temp; Ingrid Iversen, painter/coffeehouse manager; and Ramir Martinez,actor/health-food-store clerk as they come face-to-face with their dreams in the last way they expected.

Mitchell's sudden and suspicious opportunity to pen the screenplay of a bad "mafia princess" movie for obnoxious film producer Carmen Denver coincides with the opening of a reluctant Ingrid's first exhibit and Ramir's one-man-show. What goes wrong? Lucky for the reader, pretty much everything as mysterious stalkers, threatening phone calls, and old secrets promise to do a lot more than just break up a friendship in what, of all people, actress Anne Bancroft called "One of the best fun reads of all time!"

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Dunford's riotous and rollicking novel is infused with added wit and verve thanks to actor Mitchell Anderson's (Relax... It's Just Sex; Party of Five) virtuoso performance. Mining every comedic possibility from the smart dialogue and delightfully convoluted plot twists, Anderson plays all the characters in the book with lightning-fast agility. The novel unfolds as Mitchell Draper, a gay Toronto office temp and would-be screenwriter, sits at his typewriter chronicling his misadventures as they develop. The book's style adapts perfectly to the audio format. Mitchell's big break comes when Carmen Denver lumbers up his stairs (sounding like Mike Meyer's Linda Richmond/Cawfee Tawk character) and offers him a chance to script her top-secret blockbuster. When Mitchell's pals, coffeehouse manager/painter Ingrid and health food store clerk/actor Ramir, each experience a turn of good fortune, it looks like everyone will enjoy a happy ending. But that's when the complications start, and the laughter builds as Mitchell discovers that the Mafia Princess-like potboiler he's writing to Carmen's specifications is not fiction. Another top production from fledgling Fluid Words. Simultaneous release with the Alyson paperback original (Forecasts, Sept. 18). (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

Ah, to be young and resilient again! In this amusing divertissement, a young, gay, aspiring screenwriter in Toronto and his friends get caught up in mystery, danger, and romance when our hero takes on his first (dubious) commission. Mitchell Anderson has just the right light, chatty approach to this fare, to which he adds considerable expressiveness. Though he may misinterpret a nuance here and there, he keeps the listener engaged throughout. Judiciously used sound and music complement his reading and add to the humor. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

Toronto copywriter Dunford's first novel, original published in Canada in 1998, presents the allegedly hilarious misadventures of an aspiring Toronto screenwriter. Three weeks a month, Mitchell Draper labors as an office temp; the rest of the time, he slaves over pornographic sketches he sells to gay magazines and such ennobling screen projects as Hell Hole. One fine day he gets a call from nouvelle producer Carmen Denver, who thinks despite his lack of credits that he's just the guy to write the screenplay for her first film, A Time for Revenge, the saga of a Mafia princess determined to make her father pay for his misdeeds. Mitchell's ensuing roller-coaster alternation between conviction that the scenes he's writing to Carmen's measure are brilliantly successful and his certainty that her criticisms are right on target and he'll never be a screenwriter is the best thing about this Horatio Alger update. The worst is the mirror-image of Mitchell's manic-depression: Dunford's vision of Toronto as a town in which every passerby looks just like a movie star, and every coffee-shop manager is secretly waiting to break through as a painter or actor. When Mitchell's exuberant paranoia about whether Carmen is really on the up-and-up after all, and why she's being trailed by a man who's the spitting image of Antonio Banderas, combines with Dunford's split-level group portrait of Mitchell's friends Ingrid and Ramir as menials and little businesspeople just waiting for their chance to become the stars the rest of the cast so closely resembles, the result has all the coy depth of an extended game of Spot the Celebrity. Fairy-talebreakthroughsto riches and fame, on-the-spot reversals, melodramatic unmaskings, interpolated scenes written as unfailingly good-natured screen dialogue: Dunford provides everything for a sitcom pilot except the laugh track—and the laughs.