Expensive, affluent, yes - but morally bankrupt - this is the suburbanite society from which Joyce Carol Oates carves out an electrifying novel of Gothic suspense.

EXPENSIVE PEOPLE is the journal of Richard Elwood, an eighteen-year-old looking back with disaffection at his childhood in a succession of wealthy suburbs. He buys a rifle by mail-order (‘German Sniper Rifle used by Mad Fanatic SS Men - Limited Number!’) and roams the neighbourhood at night with it…The suspense is electrifying, the writing lethal.

The first sentence is guaranteed to rivet your eyes to the page: ‘I was a child murderer,’ begins Richard. Now read on.