In this seductive and chillingly nihilistic novel, Bret Easton Ellis, the author of American Psycho, returns to Los Angeles, the city whose moral badlands he portrayed unforgettably in Less Than Zero. This time is the early eighties. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

Dirk sees his best friend killed in a desert car wreck, then rifles through his pockets for a last joint before the ambulance comes. Cheryl, a wannabe newscaster, chides her future stepdaughter, "You're tan but you don't look happy." Jamie is a clubland carnivore with a taste for human blood. As rendered by Ellis, their interactions compose a chilling, fascinating, and outrageous descent into the abyss beneath L.A.'s gorgeous surfaces.

"Coolly ferocious.... Truly unsettling." --The New York Times Book Review

"Skillfully accomplishes its goal of depicting a modern moral wasteland.... Arguably Ellis's best."
--The Boston Globe

"Sparkles with a disturbing mix of humor and ultraviolence."
--Detroit Free Press

"Ellis...has a keen eye for dialogue, a sharp eye for the moral bankruptcy of modern life, and a vivid imagination."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Bret Easton Ellis...is an extremely traditional and very serious American novelist. He is the model of literary filial piety, counting among his parents Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, and Joan Didion."
--The Washington Post

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