(born 1964) Novelist of the literary brat pack of the 1980s, whose debut novel Less than Zero (1985) depicted an empty drug- and sex-driven Los Angeles, CA. Ellis’ fascination with the glamour and darkness of an urbane world of pop culture and affluence reached a crescendo in American Psycho (1991), the obsessive chronicle of an all-consuming yuppie murderer, which caused a flap when dropped by its original publisher, Simon & Schuster.