Paisley Mischief

This puckish send-up of New York City's upper-brow society is by debut novelist MacVeagh who "prepped" at Groton and studied philosophy at Harvard. Wallace "Puff" Penfield is the president of the rich gentlemen's-only Avenue Club located on Park Avenue that only admits "the right sort of person." The affable old lush Tweedle Barnes assists on the admissions committee that decides by voting who will be accepted as the new club members. Puff's chief rival and nemesis, Dick Burkus, who heads the admissions committee, asks Dante Penfield, Puff's young nephew, to sit on the committee and fill in for an absent member. Max Guberstein, a powerful movie producer, wants to join the club and orders his harried personal assistant Cecil Biddle to lobby his friend Dante to facilitate Max's membership election. Meantime, the hottest gossip in town is a "naughty, tell-novel" titled Paisley Mischief published under a pseudonym and is thought to spoof the different club members, including the indignant Puff. Dick's girlfriend and freelance journalist, Rebecca Holland, investigates her leads to trying expose the author's true identity. Further stirring the pot is Dante's mother, Violet Penfield, arriving from England, much to his chagrin, and his resourceful girlfriend, Audrey Camp. There are shenanigans and high jinks galore in MacVeagh's entertaining and very much tongue-in-check debut. (June)