American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (Picador, £7.99 in UK), is a terrifying and deeply incisive satire on modern capitalist culture. It charts, in a cold and detached fashion, the ever-increasing desire of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy twenty-something, to inflict pain on others. It is graphic and disturbing in its detail of his torture and murder of people. The emptiness and decadence of the times are perfectly illustrated in the passages in which Bateman announces to his friends that he has a psychotic desire to kill and they remain oblivious to his words. Although thought by some to be unnecessarily explicit, to be less so would blunt the blade of Ellis's satire and deaden the impact of this brilliant novel which effectively exposes the darker facets of modern culture.