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 the girl in it's 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.
