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. When new student Robert Mallory first arrives at Buckley, Bret is sure that he saw him at a movie theater months before. However, Robert denies this. He claims to have previously spent time in a psychiatric facility and Bret distrusts him because of this. 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 Trawler's victims first find that furniture has been mysteriously rearranged in their homes, then their pets disappear and they receive phone calls with hang-ups, before they are abducted, mutilated and killed, and their corpses and those of their pets are later found made up into an "assemblage." The Trawler is thought to be connected to the Riders of the Afterlife, a Satanic cult. Bret's circle of friends, which includes the Homecoming king and queen - Thom and his girlfriend Susan - welcome Robert into their circle and trust him, despite Bret's insistence that Robert is a psychotic liar. These accusations fall on deaf ears, and Bret's girlfriend Debbie believes Bret is imagining things. Bret is gay, but passes as straight. He is eventually lured to a hotel suite by Debbie's father Terry, a powerful film producer who claims that he will help Bret with writing a script for a teen film. Instead, he takes sexual advantage of Bret. Bret becomes distant from Debbie as he engages in casual sex with two of his classmates, Matt and Ryan. Matt's pets vanish and he later finds the furniture in his house rearranged. Matt then goes missing and his dead body is later discovered in an arrangement with the corpses of his pets. 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. Robert meanwhile claims that he is being followed by some 'freak' who has been stalking him from a distance. Bret discovers that Susan is cheating on Thom with Robert, and their secret affair eventually blows up. Debbie begins to receive silent phone calls and her horse is found mutilated and killed. She is later attacked in her swimming pool by an unseen assailant whom she escapes. After an attack on Susan and her former boyfriend Thom by a masked man, who flees after Susan bites into his arm, Bret goes to Robert's penthouse apartment, seals the door to the unit, unplugs the phones, and grabs a kitchen knife to confront Robert. The two end up in a knife fight. Robert falls to his death, and it is ruled a suicide based on Bret's account of events. The police discover the remains of one of the Trawler's victims in a house in
Benedict Canyon belonging to Robert's uncle, at which Robert frequently stayed. Bret gains celebrity status at the school due to having apparently caught the serial killer. However, the Trawler claims another victim, and a note sent to police by the killer reveals that they were not Robert at all, but had rather committed the killings as an act of sacrifice to Robert, whom they named 'The God.' Despite admitting to all the killings, they deny any involvement in the attack on Thom and Susan, and declare that now that their 'God' is dead this will be their last killing. Nothing more is heard from the Trawler, but Bret's reputation and popularity plummets as his story is proven false, and after noticing a bite mark on Bret's arm in the exact place she bit her assailant, Susan comes to believe it was Bret who attacked herself and Thom. Two decades later, Thom attends a book signing by Bret, now a famous author, and asks Bret if it was him who attacked Susan and himself that night. Bret denies this and speculates that it was the Trawler in an unsuccessful killing attempt. 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. ==Publication==