If I want to explain who I am, and why I was in that diner, and how I got into the mess I'm in, I guess I've got to go back a few years. Maybe not all the way back, although I don't think that anything is ever totally irrelevant. But for now I'm going to stick to the main points, like how I got to Los Angeles, and why I didn't really know anyone there, and why I liked that …

Charlie Conti has just come into his inheritance. Young, rich and alone in the world, he decides to leave the echoing luxury of his Manhattan home and head for Los Angeles. There he meets Ray Celador. Ray deals in drugs, women and philosophy, and before long he's indispensable to Charlie: father-figure, teacher, friend. But who, in the end, is Ray Celador and what does he want from Charlie?

A thriller with a literary twist, this is the story of Charlie's betrayal, of the theft of his identity and of his attempt to recover what is his. A novel of imaginative power and authenticity, Who is Charlie Conti? marks the debut of an exciting new talent.