[1] The novel's narrator, Bret, relates the story of the events of his senior year of high school in 1981, of he and his close circle of friends' acquaintance with new student Robert Mallory and the tragedy that followed.

At the outset of their senior year of high school in 1981, Bret Easton Ellis and his friends are the children of affluent film directors, producers, and other major players of the Hollywood scene, living in the heights and canyons of the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles.

They attend an elite prep school, Buckley, have easy access to drugs, go to lavish parties, and drive luxury cars.

Bret soon starts believing that Robert is responsible for the murders of the "Trawler," a serial killer that has been targeting mainly female teenagers in the Los Angeles area.

The police rule this to have been an accidental death by misadventure involving heavy drug use, but Bret suspects otherwise when Matt's father shows him pictures of the crime scene.

The novel's ending is ambiguous, leaving the identity of the Trawler, Susan and Thom's attacker, the exact nature of Robert's death, and Bret's account of the whole ordeal open to debate.

[1] Kirkus Reviews wrote, "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.

"[10] Publishers Weekly wrote that the 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.

"[11] Melissa Broder said in The New York Times that the book "invit[es] the reader more profoundly into the emotional realm of the protagonist" than Ellis's earlier works.

While the length and looping narrative helped build suspense, the reader wonders if the book could have been shorter and still achieved the same psychedelic, collage-like effect".

[15] In January 2025, Ellis revealed that the adaptation, which Kristoffer Borgli had sign on to direct, was no longer being developed at HBO, following creative differences.