Reading Time: 2 minutes From its chilling opening line, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” the virtually plotless American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, drags us screaming and giggling into the empty heart of a decadent society, obsessed with money and status. Wall Street trader Patrick Bateman’s relentless restauranteering and terrifyingly banal monologues on designer clothes juxtapose powerfully with him graphically torturing and killing lots of people- predominantly women.