SOURCE: "Hopping, Popping and Copping," in New York Times Book Review, Vol. 99, p. 14.

In the following review of The Informers, Stade links features of Ellis's novels and addresses the author's thematic concerns.

The setting of Bret Easton Ellis's fourth novel is that of his first, Less Than Zero (1985), a critical and popular success made into a movie that was neither. In these two novels, the setting, Los Angeles and environs, has more motive force than any character. But the method of the new novel is pretty much that of Mr. Ellis's second. The Rules of Attraction (1987), set in the fictional and farcical Camden College in New Hampshire. In these two novels, affectless voices (to which names are attached) speak directly to the reader of their party hopping, narcotics popping and sexual copping, all of it joyless. In those three novels, the main characters are well-off college students who...