Long before the events of GHOSTWRITERS and SHERWOOD, in 1980s New York, a time of big hair, coke-fueled society parties, and the rise of the greed-is-good 1%, teen heiress Camilla Randall befriends Plantagenet Smith, a penniless young gay playwright. But they quarrel and he disappears in the direction of California.

Soon after, Camilla is assaulted by her mother’s fiancé, smeared in the newspapers by a sexy muckraking journalist, and her family loses all their money in the Savings and Loan scandal. With nothing left but her DeLorean and a suitcase full of designer clothes, Camilla sets off in search of Plantagenet, her only real friend.

But when she arrives in the Golden State, she discovers Plant has developed strange heterosexual tendencies and an inconvenient girlfriend. Camilla is forced to move in with some wild-partying college friends, and when a famously debauched TV star comes on to her and then ends up dead, Camilla is arrested for his murder.

In order to clear her name and find the real killer, she turns to a friendly sanitation worker, a dotty octogenarian neighbor and the hot muckraking newspaperman who ridiculed her—who also happens to be her boss.