The Bonfire of the Vanities

Sherman McCoy, Wall Street bond-trader with a salary like a telephone number ... Peter Fallow, expatriate Fleet Street gossip-writer whose price is a free lunch ... Larry Kramer, assistant DA with a lustful eye on the juror wearing brown lipstick ... Reverend Reggie Bacon, charismatic ghetto warlord, con-man and power in the streets ...

The Bonfire of the Vanities welds their stories together on a night in the Bronx when a $48,000 Mercedes hits a street it shouldn't have been near with a girl in its tan leather bucket seat who shouldn't have been there at all. The next day a young black accident victim is in hospital in a coma and Sherman McCoy has booked himself a one-way ticket to disaster. --back cover