Picador: Clay is a successful screenwriter, middle-aged and disaffected; he’s in LA to cast his new movie. However, this trip is anything other than professional, and he’s soon drifting through a louche and long-familiar circle – a world largely populated by the band of infamous teenagers first introduced in Less Than Zero. But his debauched reverie is about to be interrupted by a violent plot for revenge and Clay’s seemingly endless proclivity for betrayal and exploitation looks set to land him somewhere darker and more ominous than ever before. ‘A murder mystery – a woozy, paranoid, hallucinatory version of LA noir’ Sunday Times ‘Brilliantly written and coolly self-aware . . . Here, as in Less Than Zero, Ellis is plumbing the depths of human nature, exposing it at its worst.’ Observer ‘The novel is a kind of modern noir and, as in Chandler, the form’s accepted master, atmosphere is king. Paranoia prevails’ Independent on Sunday