Food Chain

Virgil Marcel is the golden boy of L.A. cuisine - an all-American Wolfgang Puck with rock-star good looks, a restauranteur's restauranteur and owner of Trimalchio's, the trendiest restaurant in a city of trendy restaurants. A magnet for the beautiful and the powerful, Trimalchio's is the hottest ticket in town - Morton's, Le Dome and Spago all exist to absorb the hapless players who can't get a table at Trimalchio's. Out of the blue, he receives an invitation to join London's secretive Everlasting Club, where a party has been going non-stop for some 350 years and whose membership has included the Marquis de Sade, American presidents and European royalty. It's unclear what fuels the club's Dionysian revelry, but the members are ominously insistent that Virgil join. When he declines, he is "kidnapped" and taken on a sensualist's tour of Britain. But is this just part of the initiation, or is he being prepared for a more primitive and sinister ritual?

Publishers Weekly

Britain's Nicholson delivers a savvy, morbidly humorous story of a trendy L.A. restaurateur's undesired initiation into a secretive London club. (Nov.)

Geoff Nicholson is the author of twenty books, including Sex Collectors, Hunters and Gatherers, The Food Chain, and Bleeding London, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. He divides his time between Los Angeles and London