High Concepts: A Hollywood Nightmare
available worldwide on Amazon
for just $2.99 USD.
A pop diva trying to reboot her career as a serious actress. Warring producers putting hits on one another. Ferocious attack monkeys and secret pit bull rings. Hollywood can be a weird and disorienting place.
And we didn’t even mention the philosophers.
Are you ready for a thriller that’s laugh-out-loud funny? As one 5-star reviewer said so clinically about High Concepts: A Hollywood Nightmare: “If you don’t laugh, there’s something wrong with you.”
Donald P. Wirt, PhD, is a young, obtuse professor of philosophy who is mistakenly fired for “unprofessional and unethical conduct” at a professional ethics conference. But his luck changes when an affluent couple hires him to be a private tutor to their son, Miles, a brilliant high school junior who, rather than prepping for the SAT, spends his nights writing slasher film scripts and pitching Hollywood prodcos under the nom de théâtre, “Donnie Percival.” When one of those prodcos surprisingly requests an actual meeting in L.A., Miles fears he will lose the deal if he’s discovered to be only a pimply youth of sixteen. So in return for a share of the payout, he sends Donald in his place–in the guise of “Donnie Percival.”
Yet almost as soon as his plane lands at LAX, Donald discovers that “Donnie Percival” has a life of his own.
As the clueless Donald becomes the hottest scribe in Hollywood, the burning question emerges: how hot can “Donnie Percival” become before Donald himself goes up in flames?
As another 5-star reviewer shrewdly observed: High Concepts is a “delicious cocktail of wit: Mix two parts early Waugh (Decline and Fall) with one part Heller (Picture This) and one part Wodehouse short story; then add a dash of Monty Python’s “Philosopher’s Song” (to taste), and you’ve got McInerny’s new concoction.”
High Concepts: A Hollywood Nightmare is a blackly comic thriller that will have you laughing all the way through the final credits.
