'Definitely demonic, exquisitely carved, deadly murderous comedy' DAWN POWELL, WASHINGTON POST
' Elaine Dundy's young and sexy American heroine, named (excellently) Honey Flood' LOS ANGELES TIMES
In The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy revealed the life of the young expatriate in Paris in all its hilarious and heartbreaking drama. With The Old Man and Me, written when Dundy was living in England in the early 1960s, she tackles the American girl in London, a bit older but certainly no wiser.
There's love and there's revenge. Betsy Lou Saegessor is bent on revenge. Her father is dead and to top it off, the vast fortune that should have been hers has ended up, through the second marriage of her now deceased stepmother, in the bank account of the legendary and elusive Englishman, C. D. McKee.
So Betsy sets out from New York to seduce and betray him. C .D. is fat and ugly, but boy is he sexy. Betsy follows him through the night clubs of London, grooving to jazz, smoking hash and plotting murder.
Elaine Dundy (1921-2008) grew up in New York City and Long Island. After graduating from Sweet Briar College in 1943, she worked as an actress in Paris and, later, London, where she met her future husband, the theater critic Kenneth Tynan.
Dundy wrote three novels, The Dud Avocado (1958), The Old Man and Me (1964), and The Injured Party (1974); a play, My Place (produced in 1962); biographies of Elvis Presley and the actor Peter Finch; a study of Ferriday, Louisiana; and a memoir, Life Itself!