At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion's legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early twenties, he shared a Manhattan apartment with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars and he was a struggling actor selling popcorn at Radio City Music Hall. A few years later, he produced and starred in the now-iconic film After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese.

In the midst of it all, Griffin's twenty-two-year-old sister, Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the 1980s. The outcome was a travesty of justice that marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne's career as a bestselling author of true crime narratives.

And yet, for all its boldface cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, The Friday Afternoon Club is no mere celebrity memoir. It is, down to its bones, a family story that embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny and moving characters - its author most of all.

Handsome is the brains behind the operation; Sammy, his best friend, is the muscle; Victor is the tough guy; and Applebee writes 'crazy small' crib notes. They're the four best cheaters North Point Academy has ever seen, but their day is over. When their newest plot is uncovered, the guys decide to go straight. But how long can they be good when every test provides new opportunity?

American students David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are spending their holidays backpacking around England. Seeking shelter from a storm at unwelcoming Yorkshire inn 'The Slaughtered Lamb', the pair are soon spooked by the unwelcoming locals, who nonetheless warn them not to stray from the road. Sure enough, the duo become lost on the moors and are attacked by a savage animal. Jack is killed, but when David wakes in a London hospital weeks later he is told that his attacker was in fact a rampaging madman. Already shocked and confused, David is horrified to receive a visit from the rotting corpse of an undead Jack, who informs him that the creature which attacked them was in fact a werewolf. Unless David kills himself he will fall prey to the monster's curse at the next full moon, and transform into a savage killer...