Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis; Knopf, $24.95

There are a lot of intersections in Bret Easton Ellis' sleek, hip new sixth novel Imperial Bedrooms, a sequel to his 1985 blockbuster Less Than Zero . There's the elegant commingling of the superficial to the realistic, the glamorous with the grisly, Pinkberry meets Grey Goose, and a Mapquested mass of real-life Los Angeles street junctions where Clay, a bicoastal screenwriter, finds himself trying to decipher who broke into his Art Deco, Doheny Plaza condo while he was in Manhattan for four months. The mystery interloper stole nothing, but managed to use his computer, drink his Diet Coke, and shuffle things around, which strikes fear in the heart of a guy who chomps Altoids, drinks too much, and takes Ambien "to get to sleep since there's not enough vodka."

Boyhood friend Julian hangs around, and there's a blond gal named Rain Turner who is young and predictably eager to audition for Clay's new film, but offers nude photos and sex to buffer the rejection that is bound to appear on her Hollywood doorstep any day now. Implausible love blooms between them, but it's that peripheral, hollow-smiled kind of love since she's hiding a secret that will surely piss Clay off. Because this is Bret Easton Ellis' world, where the damned rise to fame and power and the rest of LA is doomed to swim in the mucky waters of depression, drugs, faceless sex, and boredom. Oh, and there's this mysterious blue jeep that keeps following Clay around, and a series of random terror-text messages saying things like, "I'm watching you," and, "Hey gringo, you can't hide." Snuff films and their aftermath begin to float to the surface – on video, and unapologetically posted on the Internet. Actually, the corpse count is one of the more interesting things about Imperial Bedrooms; Ellis serves them up with missing hands, dissolved in acid, mutilated, cemented, urinated on, face-fucked, and lain out in a mass grave.

The novel's title derives from an Elvis Costello album (its predecessor's title was from a Costello song). The novel itself is thin but packed with the sort of Ellis-isms one would expect from such a sequel. It's made up of pages of clipped paragraphs stuffed with vibrating iPhones, BMWs, SUVs, JFKs, and lots of that faux-communication via text-message rather than IRL (in real life).

While the story veers toward the elliptical and sullen, there's dramatic tension ramping its way up and up, while the modish LA sensibility should satisfy label-hounds who will eat up all of the author's gratuitous namedropping.

This is definitely not his best effort, but Ellis remains a good writer with such a secretive literary persona that it demands attention (much like that of Donna Tartt). Having lived through a damaged youth with an abusive father, braved the Brat Pack era, and the death (at just 30) of his boyfriend after a six-year relationship, there's sorrow and a deep-seated detachment framing the pages of his books, and that's the kind of baggage no amount of brooding bestsellers can disguise.