Death by Leisure

Chris Ayres

After a brief and undignified stint as a war correspondent, Chris Ayres is exiled by his newspaper to Hollywood, where he lives in a building called The Leisureplex and sends celebrity tittle-tattle back home. Seduced by the apparently infinite wealth of LA, Ayres embarks on an ill-advised odyssey of self-gratification (in the name of research) and breaks first rule of foreign reporting: he goes native. Before long, he is an SUV-driving narcissist with a flat-screen TV in every room, eight pairs of designer flip-flops, a seven-digit overdraft, and a wife he met on the internet.

As always, however, disaster looms. After a fire the size of Luxembourg, a Biblical flood, and the apocalypse of Katrina, Ayres realises he is living on a precipice. Like a gonzo Great Gatsby, Death by Leisure is a savage and hilarious takedown of our times, and a wake-up call to aspiring Leisuretocrats everywhere.