Its plot centers on the affair between married Jules Mendelson, an extremely influential member of Los Angeles high society, and Flo March, a diner waitress and aspiring actress whose life is transformed by the illicit relationship until she finds herself the inconvenient woman of the title.

Chief among them are billionaire Jules Mendelson, a confidant of the President who is on the verge of being offered a prime political position in Brussels, as long as the story about a girl who plunged from the balcony of his Chicago hotel room in 1953 remains the deep secret he has harbored all these years; Flo March (née Fleurette Houlihan), his considerably younger lover, who slowly sheds her coarse exterior as Jules introduces her to the finer things in life; Pauline Mendelson, Jules' devoted wife who presides over Clouds, their mountaintop estate overlooking LA, and one of the most admired hostesses in their social circle, whose errant son Kippie by a former marriage proves to be the bane of her elegant existence; New York City writer Philip Quennell, author of a bestselling book about a leveraged buyout, who's brought to Hollywood by cocaine-snorting producer Casper Stieglitz to write a documentary film about drug abuse in the film industry; young widow Camilla Ebury, Philip's lover and the niece of Hector Paradiso, a closeted homosexual whose alleged suicide raises the suspicions of those who believe he was really murdered; gossip columnist Cyril Rathbone, who thrives on the secrets of the rich and powerful; hustler and sometime porn actor Lonny Edge, who has in his possession the long-missing completed manuscript of the final book by dissolute author Basil Plant (a thinly-disguised version of Truman Capote) but doesn't realize its importance to the literary world; and gangster Arnie Zwillman, who knows enough about Jules Mendelson's past to put an end to his political ambitions.

In The New York Times, Jill Robinson observed, "This is a smart novel because Dominick Dunne understands the distance between Los Angeles society and the spicy bazaars of Hollywood.

Klepp of Entertainment Weekly graded the book B and commented, "Dunne does a good job of making his make-believe gossip believable, even riveting, in spite of some wooden dialogue, fiberboard characters, and the constant adjustment of the plot by the long, lazy arm of coincidence .

It starred Jason Robards as Jules, Jill Eikenberry as Pauline, Rebecca De Mornay as Flo, Chelsea Field as Camilla, Peter Gallagher as Philip, Joseph Bologna as Arnie, Grant Cramer as Lonny, Chad Lowe as Kippie, and Roddy McDowall as Cyril.