Amsterdam (1998)

Amsterdam is a short novel focusing on two old and extremely posh friends: Vernon Halliday, newspaper editor of the tabloidy fabrication The Judge, and Clive Linley, who is a very very serious composer. They meet at the funeral of Molly Lane, and are among at least four of her former lovers at said event. We don’t learn an awful lot about Lane, beyond the fact that she entertained a lot of men, and died of an unspecified madness-inducing illness. Vernon and Clive make a pact to “help each other out” if they ever find themselves in a similar state of mental deterioration, which sets in motion a series of highly improbable events in the name of, I guess, “satire.”