Expensive, affluent, yes - but morally bankrupt. This is the suburban society from which Joyce Carol Oates carves an electrifying novel of Gothic suspense. Expensive People is the journal of Richard Elwood, an overweight eighteen-year-old, looking back with disaffection at his childhood in a succession of wealthy suburbs. He buys a gun by mail-order ('German Sniper Rifle used by Mad Fanatic SS Men. Limited Number!') and roams the neighbourhood at night... The suspense is terrifying, the writing lethal. The first sentence is guaranteed to rivet your eyes to the page: 'I was a child murderer', Richard begins his memoir. Now read on...
