Richard Hudson, an inveterate woman-chaser and gifted used car salesman, possesses a pimp's understanding of the ways in which women (and men) are most vulnerable - and justifies his seductions with a highly peverse logic. By day, he works his crooked car lot with much success. By night, he returns home to a family of misfits: an adoring, ageless mother; her washed-up husband, an ex-film director who is twenty years her junior; and a curious teenage stepsister ripe for corruption.

One day Richard is siezed by a feeling of terror and revulsion; he realises he's wasting his life in the meaningless pursuit of money. His only hope, he decides, is to abandon the used-car game and try his hand at something creative - an ambitious and risk-laden film project that will "tie up in a single package his reason for existing". The fact that he has no experience in the arts means little to Richard. "Experts" are enlisted, and like a ringleader engineering a crime, he moves forward with a volatile and unyielding energy.

Richard completes his cherished project. But forces beyond his control swiftly reject and destroy it. As a result, the enraged and humiliated used-car salesman goes on a bender for the ages drinking his way through the underbelly of Los Angeles and exacting a monstrous revenge on all who have crossed him.