A Bret Easton Ellis novel about wealthy LA teens and a serial killer. Sound familiar? For his first novel in 13 years, Ellis revisits and merges the sensibilities of his two best-known works, blending the coke-dusted high school milieu of Less Than Zero (1985) with the deliberately shallow and hyperviolent atmosphere of American Psycho (1991). Ellis frames this story as autobiographical: In the fall of 1981, as a senior at a tony prep school, 17-year-old Bret Ellis turns his attention away from his budding novel, drug-fueled parties, and various sexual assignations to wonder if attractive new student Robert might be less innocent than he seems. The papers are full of stories about a serial killer called the Trawler and the cult Riders of the Afterlife; when one of his classmates/sex partners is grotesquely murdered, Bret senses a connection. When friends start receiving the killer's calling card--rock band posters--his concern about Robert intensifies. As his investigations continue, he confronts more immediate dramas. There's infighting among his peers; unsettled post--high school plans; and the attentions of his girlfriend's father, a movie producer who invites Bret to pitch ideas but is mainly running a casting couch. The usual issues with Ellis apply to this bulky novel: The flatness of the characters, the gratuitousness of the violence, the Didion-esque cool that sometimes reads as Olympian smugness. But as the story proceeds, it also becomes easier to admire Ellis' ability to sustain the mood--his characters might, as Bret says, "look at everything through this prism of numbness," but he does ably capture how Bret's paranoia intensifies out of that emotional distance and how the urge for feeling and connection infects and warps his personality. Bret Ellis the character is trying to play it cool, but Bret Easton Ellis the author knows just how much he's covering up. A surprisingly seductive work of erotic horror. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Ellis continues to indulge his penchant for metafiction in this Brobdingnagian novel, whose conceit is that it is Ellis' memoir of his seventeenth year, when, in 1981, he and a clutch of his rich, beautiful, entitled friends are seniors in L.A.'s tony Buckley School. Into their lives comes Robert Mallory, a new student who has just moved to L.A. Rich and drop-dead gorgeous, he quickly becomes part of the group, even though, as Bret (the character standing in for Ellis) observes, "I suspected there was something wrong with Robert Mallory almost as soon as I met him." This is the same year that a serial killer dubbed the Trawler is terrorizing the San Fernando Valley, murdering young women and mutilating their bodies. Bret becomes obsessed with the cases and gradually becomes convinced that Robert is complicit, especially when the class stoner, Matt--whom Bret, a closeted gay, has secretly been having sex with--is murdered, though no one will believe it was murder or that Robert might have been involved. Whether or not he was is the question that drives this compulsively readable novel informed by suspense that is, at times, breathtaking. The setting is beautifully realized not only by its evocation of place, but also by its myriad references to popular music of the day. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes nostalgic and even poignant, Ellis' latest is an unqualified success.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The always-controversial Ellis will be making headlines with his latest novel, which he acknowledges is based on his own life as a teenager.

Bret Easton Ellis, the narrator of this ponderous work of autofiction set in 1980s Los Angeles from bestseller Ellis, is a private school senior with literary ambitions who's fascinated by books and movies; he has already started writing his first novel, Less Than Zero. But Ellis the grown-up author ups the ante in several ways: he depicts a lavish lifestyle fueled by money and privilege, explores his own fluid sexuality (and that of some of his friends), and adds a lurid story of home invasions and murders (one victim is a high school friend). In effect, he mashes up Less Than Zero with American Psycho. As Ellis explores the theme of lost innocence ("It was as if another world was announcing itself, painting the one we had all safely taken for granted into a darker color"), he often demonstrates his skill as a storyteller, but this book feels like two disparate novels--an overly detailed, fictionalized memoir and a high gothic serial killer thriller--that never come together meaningfully or believably. This is not the place to start for those new to Ellis, nor will genre fans find much to like. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Jan.)