'I'm sick of all this pointless glamour,' his glamorous girlfriend said. 'I want a simple life.' If only Connor McNab had listened. Now Philomena is off to California, allegedly on a fashion shoot, but he doesn't know where she is staying and a sinking feeling tells him that she might never come back.

Connor's friend Jeremy Green is no help: he is the 'famous short-story writer' (which they both agree is an oxymoron) with an imminent publication date and some people holding his dog to ransom for reasons too Machiavellian to blurb. Connor's sister Brook, genius mathematician and anorexic, is too busy anguishing over Rwanda and Bosnia. His editor at Ciao Bella is only concerned about the suddenly elusive celebrity of the month. Thanks goodness for Pallas, a knock-out table dancer with a heart of gold.