Like all would-be Hollywood screenwriters, David Armitage wants to be rich and famous. But for the past eleven years, he's tasted nothing but failure. Then, out of nowhere, big time luck comes his way when one of his scripts is bought for television - and before you can say overnight success, he's the new toast of Hollywood as the creator of a hit series. Suddenly a player in Tinsel Town, he finds himself reinventing himself at great speed - especially when it comes to walking out on his wife and daughter for a young producer who worships only at the altar of ambition. But David's upward mobility takes a decidedly strange turn when a billionaire film buff named Philip Fleck barges into his life, proposing a very curious collaboration. David takes the bait, and suddenly finds himself inadvertently entering into a Faustian Pact, and an express ride to the lower depths of the Hollywood jungle. Written with his usual page-turning brio, Douglas Kennedy's wonderfully sardonic and nightmarish tale of a Hollywood success story gone askew is a dark, funny journey into the wrong side of the American dream.