Description:
The Hamptons, "where gossip ranks slightly behind cocktails and just ahead of lawn care," are populated with all sorts of people these days and James Brady takes advantage of the frictions among them to concoct a frothy, fun adventure in his third novel, The House That Ate the Hamptons. There are the old-guard Wasps; a sprinkling of celebrities, such as Martha Stewart; and noisier, new-money types like Puff Daddy, with his infamous pool parties. But the newest rich kid on the block is a mystery and he is building a monstrously large house that insults the good taste of his neighbors. Does it really belong to a Texas oil baron? Or is he a front for a more sinister third party, perhaps some Arabs? The hero-narrator of this tale is Beecher Stowe, a magazine writer with a family home in the Hamptons, who assembles a ragtag band of highbrow neighbors to solve the mystery of the house under construction. Among his confederates are the devilishly beautiful Lady Alix, an ambitious Congressman, and recognizable copies of both real and made-up celebrities such as Salman Rushdie, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.--and the fictional hero of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, architect Howard Roark. Eventually the investigation turns up the real owner: a Kuwaiti prince whose business concerns not only the nervous Hamptonites but also the Federal government. Still, hell hath no fury like a Hamptonite whose aesthetic sensibilities have been scorned, and eventually Stowe and his friends carry the day. Brady, like Stowe, is a magazine writer--with columns in Parade magazine and Advertising Age--and a part-time Hamptons resident. His third Hamptons novel, (following Gin Lane and Further Lane) gently mocks and soaks up the glitter of the place, and is just the thing for a summer evening with a sundowner. --Katherine Anderson
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