9. American Psycho
Due to some particularly detailed acts of torture, Bret Easton Ellis'
American Psycho created such a furore at its time of release that one publishing house dumped it entirely, and Ellis received death threats. Given that all manner of vile things happen in novels, it was perhaps testament to the vivacitythe unrelenting realismof the author's prose that so riled its opponents. Some ten years later, my own copy was sold in shrink wrap! But for those of us who could distinguish between actual torture and bleak satire, the story's pleasures derived from the immense detail pouring from its narrator's stream of consciousness, one of Patrick Bateman's central obsessions being placewhat was lavish, where was hip, where one could be invisible, and where one went to be seen. Accordingly, the many faces of New York City depict Bateman's playgrounds, from the innocuous (restaurants, beach houses, and nightclubs) to the malign (back alleys, stairwells, and even a torture chamber in Hell's Kitchen), the late Eighties ambiance of the town portrayed convincingly enough to create the sense of a period documentan even more impressive feat when you learn that it was filmed ten years later in Toronto.