Amazon.com description: Product Description: Fiction. Stokoe's novel takes place in Hollywood, the City of Dreams. Jack had come here with one ambition: to become a star, by any means. He wanted to be like the people in the tabloids: Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Tom and Nicole. Instead, he entered a world seedier than anything he could have imagined, full of drugs and crime, whores, snuff shows, incest, deceit, and despair. With a new introduction by Dennis Cooper, HIGH LIFE shows Matthew Stokoe to be a worthy heir to the great tradition of California noir. HIGH LIFE is an unholy hybrid of Raymond Chandler's best work and Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.