Too Much Money

by Dominick Dunne Narrated by Ann Marie Lee, Nicholas Hormann

Overview

My name is Gus Bailey...It should be pointed out that it is a regular feature of my life that people whisper things in my ear, very private things, about themselves or others. I have always understood the art of listening.

The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. His propensity for gossip has finally gotten him into trouble-$11 million worth. His problems begin when he falls hook, line, and sinker for a fake story from an unreliable source and repeats it on a radio program. As a result of his flip comments, Gus becomes embroiled in a nasty slander suit brought by Kyle Cramden, the powerful congressman he accuses of being involved in the mysterious disappearance of a young woman, and he fears it could mean the end of him.

The stress of the lawsuit makes it difficult for Gus to focus on the novel he has been contracted to write, which is based on the suspicious death of billionaire Konstantin Zacharias. It is a story that has dominated the party conversations of Manhattan's chattering classes for more than two years. The convicted murderer is behind bars, but Gus is not convinced that justice was served. There are too many unanswered questions, such as why a paranoid man who was usually accompanied by bodyguards was without protection the very night he perished in a tragic fire.

Konstantin's hot-tempered widow, Perla, is obsessed with climbing the social ladder and, as a result, she will do anything to suppress this potentially damaging story. Gus is convinced she is the only thing standing between him and the truth.

Dominick Dunne revives the world he first introduced in his mega-bestselling novel People Like Us, and he brings readers up to date on favorite characters such as Ruby and Elias Renthal, Lil Altemus, and, of course, the beloved Gus Bailey. Once again, he invites us to pull up a seat at the most important tables at Swifty's, get past the doormen at esteemed social clubs like The Butterfield, and venture into the innermost chambers of the Upper East Side's most sumptuous mansions.

Too Much Money is a satisfying, mischievous, and compulsively readable tale by the most brilliant society chronicler of our time-the man who knew all the secrets and wasn't afraid to share them.

Editorial Reviews

Janet Maslin

Mr. Dunne left behind one last, stinging roman à clef. And he most assuredly used it to settle scores. Too Much Money pits his autobiographical character, Gus Bailey, against the New York nouveau riche types of its title. And it keeps Gus constantly aghast at their gall. It commemorates Mr. Dunne's favorite obsessions—crime, wealth, status, backbiting and power—into a story with a distinctly valedictory flavor
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

For every striver who claws his way to the top of the moneyed heap, another must fall from grace to make room; in the work of late novelist and journalist Dunne (1925-2009), those falls are usually preceded by a vigorous shove. In his final novel, the players include grande dame Lil Altemus, banking heiress (and suspected murderess) Perla Zacharias, and flight attendant-turned-jetsetter Ruby Renthal, alongside journalist Gus Bailey (Dunne's minimally-fictionalized surrogate). A sequel to 1988's People Like Us based on Dunne's real-life experiences as a society crime writer, Dunne brings an expected level of intimacy to his unflattering look at New York's wealthiest citizens, incorporating his own spectacular Hollywood fall from grace and subsequent comeback, as well as his legal standoff with a congressman whom Dunne implicated in the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy. A fitting cap to Dunne's notable career, this novel is more parody than satire-populated by jeer-worthy caricatures hard to sympathize with-but proves to be a compulsively readable diversion, showcasing Dunne's razor wit and furious disdain for those who believe that laws apply to everyone but themselves.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

A vindictive multibillionairess tries to suppress a seasoned raconteur's lust for life, not to mention his tell-all new novel, in this posthumous roman a clef by Dunne, who died of cancer in August 2009. Dunne's narrator (and alter ego) Augustus Bailey writes for glossy gossip magazine Park Avenue and pens bestselling novels and "true crime" starring the globe's most glittering grandees. A born confidante, "Gus" attracts secrets like Beluga draws partygoers, but he can be a blabbermouth. On the radio, he blithely blurts a preposterous rumor implicating Congressman Kyle Cramden in the disappearance of Cramden's lovely intern, provoking an $11 million slander lawsuit. Gus, 84, fears the litigation will bankrupt the estate he hopes to leave his children. His only hope is Infamous Lady, his novel-in-progress, which dredges up the nagging questions still surrounding the death of ALS-afflicted superbanker Konstantin Zacharias in a fire at his Biarritz villa. Zacharias' widow Perla was never a suspect, and she'd like to keep it that way. Now the third richest woman in the world, Perla has the "too much money" of the title: enough to eliminate any threats to her reputation by far less civil means than lawsuits. Like having Gus tailed by a man in gray flannel, pressuring his publisher to scuttle Infamous Lady and digging up a bogus allegation of pederasty to blackmail Gus into settling the Cramden suit. Stress dampens Gus's joie de vivre, and he's no longer everyone's favorite bavardeur at society functions peopled by disinherited socialites, ex-convict financiers, centenarian doyennes and declassee divas. Gus's dilemmas find too-easy solutions, because Gus, as did, perhaps, his creator, realizesthat imminent mortality trivializes one's worst fears, that life is too short not to speak truth to power, and that he'll be somewhere money and revenge can't reach when his last novel comes out. On full display here, Dunne's (Another City, Not My Own, 1997, etc.) jaded eye for the foibles of the ultraspoiled, his stylish wit and eavesdropper's ear-they are among the many reasons he is sorely missed.

From the Publisher

"The only person writing about high society from inside the aquarium."   —Tina Brown

"Readers mourned Dunne's passing in August 2009, bereft at the thought of life without his keen novels and incisive Vanity Fair profiles...But Dunne grants us one more good read...[his] glittering high-society satire harbors sorrow at its heart as [his] burdened hero ponders his secrets and regrets."—Booklist

"On full display here, Dunne's jaded eye for the foibles of the ultraspoiled, his stylish wit and eavesdropper's ear—they are among the many reasons he is sorely missed."—Kirkus Reviews
 
“A savagely honest presentation of the upper echelons of New York City society . . . none of whom escape Dunne’s sharp gaze.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Juicy high-society soap opera.”—Los Angeles Times

“Familiar turf for Dunne fans . . . a fun romp . . . Pull up a chair at Swifty’s, order some Champagne, and enjoy.”
—USA Today
 
“A last delicious dish on the rich and famous [Dunne] knew and loved to skewer so well.”
—The Boston Globe

JUNE 2010 - AudioFile

Dominick Dunne, who died in 2009, offers another indictment of the excesses of self-indulgent, name-dropping socialites. New York society insiders will see through Dunne's thinly disguised characterizations in this sequel to PEOPLE LIKE US (1988). Dunne's fictional alter ego, society reporter Gus Bailey, tells his story. Bailey's battling a lawsuit, and he's been contracted to write a novel based on the suspicious death of Perla Zacharias's billionaire husband. Perla, a vicious, social-climbing villainess, doesn't want the book published. Ann Marie Lee's narration is serviceable, bringing upper-crust charm to her characterizations. However, Dunne's incisive wit and sarcasm get lost in her sweet voice. Not as much fun as earlier books, but worth a listen. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171990602
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	12/15/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Prologue

A few years ago there was a rumor about me that I had been murdered at my house in Prud'homme, Connecticut, by a cross-country serial killer of rich older men. Of course, it wasn't true, although it was a rumor that lingered for awhile. Gus Bailey was dead. There was indeed a serial killer at the time, who was very much in the news. He had just killed a couturier in Miami who was so famous that Princess Diana and Elton John and his husband attended the funeral in Milan. I confess now to have been the person who started the rumor. I couldn't figure out how to finish a novel I was writing at the time, and I wanted desperately to leave the next day for the Cannes Film Festival with Stokes Bishop, my editor at Park Avenue magazine, who assured me in advance that I was to be seated between the French film star Catherine Deneuve and Princess Olga of Greece at the magazine's party at the Hotel du Cap in Antibes. I didn't want to miss that. So I just grabbed the headline news of the murder in Miami and added Gus Bailey to the killer's list, thus ending the novel, and I flew to France. Do I regret having done that? Yes.

My name is Augustus Bailey, but I am called Gus Bailey by everyone who knows me. It happens that I am often recognized by strangers on the street, or in public places, and even those people call me Gus. I only use Augustus Bailey on my passport, my driver's license, the covers of the books I write, my monthly diaries for Park Avenue magazine, and the weekly introductions on my cable television series, Augustus Bailey Presents, which I host. I thought it best to tell you a bit about myself, before I get into the story that I am about to tell. It should be pointed out that it is a regular feature of my life that people whisper things in my ear, very private things, about themselves, or others. I have always understood the art of listening.

The characters in all my novels are based on real people, or combinations of real people, and they are often recognizable to the readers. Many of the ones who recognized themselves in the books became livid with me. If you could have heard the way Marty Lesky, the Hollywood mogul, who has since died, yelled at me over the telephone. There was a time when I would have been paralyzed with fear at such a call from Marty Lesky, but that time has passed. It made him more furious that I was not writhing with apologies, but the dynamic between us had changed over the years and I no longer feared him, as I used to fear male authority figures, going all the way back to the terror my father inspired in me as a child, but that's another story. I've lost several friends over my books. One I missed. One I didn't.

Losing the occasional friend along the way goes with the writer's territory, especially if the writer travels in the same rarefied circles he writes about, as I do. In time, some people come back. Pauline Mendelson did. She was a very good sport about the whole thing. Mona Berg did, sort of. Cecilia Lesky did. Maisie Verdurin adored being a character in one of my books and bought fifty copies to give as Christmas presents. Others didn't, of course. Justine Altemus, my great friend Lil Altemus's daughter, never spoke to me again. Only recently, Justine and I were seated side by side at a dinner dance at the Colony Club, celebrating Sandy Winslow's 90th birthday, and we never so much as looked in each other's direction for the hour and a half we were table companions.

Now I intend to give myself a party on the occasion of my upcoming birthday, a milestone birthday, which I must confess I never thought I would reach, especially in the last two years of stress and high anxiety, leading to a heart malfunction and hospital stay. This was all caused by a monstrously unpleasant experience involving some monstrously unpleasant people, who had no place in my life and took up far too much time in it, particularly when the years left to me are dwindling down to a precious few, as Walter Huston used to sing.

But it is a fact that the fault was mine. I fell hook, line, and sinker for a fake story from an unreliable source. I thought I had the scoop of my career, and I made the fatal mistake of repeating it on a radio show of no importance, and the consequences were dire. If you must know, I accused a Congressman, former Congressman Kyle Cramden, of knowing more than he was admitting about the case of the famous missing intern, Diandra Lomax. I made a mess, I tell you. I try hard not to think about it, and as of late, my attention has been focused more on party planning. When my birthday party list grew to over three hundred, and I was only at the P's, I realized I would have to rethink things. I know entirely too many people. Although I have several very serious enemies in important positions, I hope not to appear immodest when I say that I am a popular fellow, who gets asked to the best parties in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Paris, and goes to most of them.

I decided to limit my party to eighty-five people, which is the age that I will soon be. It is so difficult to hone my friends to eighty-five. It doesn't even scratch the surface. Eighty-five, in fact, really means forty-something, with wives, husbands, lovers, and partners, making up the other forty or so. There will be hurt feelings, to be sure. That's why I don't like to give parties. I go about a great deal in social life, but I never reciprocate. The spacious terrace of my penthouse in the Turtle Bay section of New York City, where I have lived for twenty-five years, has a view of the East River, and could easily hold a hundred people or more without much of a squeeze, but I have never once entertained there.

I feel now, however, as if I deserve a party. I have emerged from the dark cloud that has hovered over my life for several years. The unpleasantness is, thank God, behind me. Hence the desire for a celebration, although my birthday party will never take place, as you will find. Things happen. Everything changes.

I've noticed that concurrent with the growth of my public popularity, there is a small but powerful group of people who are beginning, or have already begun, to despise me. Elias Renthal, still in federal prison in Las Vegas as this story begins, is one of my despisers. Countess Stamirsky, Zita Stamirsky to her very few friends, is another who despises me after I refused to write about her son's suicide from a heroin overdose while wearing women's clothes at the family castle in Antwerp.

And, of course, there is Perla Zacharias, allegedly the third richest woman in the world, who had me followed by investigators trained by the Mossad in Israel, and falsely claimed that I had been involved in an act of child molestation at the Empress Eugenie Hotel in Biarritz during her husband's murder trial. That's the kind of person Perla Zacharias is. That's the kind of story she spreads.

I have written about all these powerful people in Park Avenue, or in a novel, and earned them eternal enmity. Their time would come, I always thought. Elias Renthal knew what he was screaming about when he said, They're going to get you, his face all red and ugly, as he pointed his finger in my face, only moments before he collapsed on the floor of the men's room of the Butterfield Club.

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