Vernon G. Little, a teenager from a provincial Texas town, becomes an accidental witness to the massacre of his own classmates. The police immediately take him into account: first as a witness, then as a possible accomplice, and finally as a murderer. The hero flees to Mexico, where a palm paradise and his beloved girl await him, and meanwhile more and more crimes are being pinned on him.

With some similarities to J.D. Salinger's story “The Catcher in the Rye,” the novel “Vernon Lord Little” is a tragicomic work: the plot cliches of mass fiction become, under the pen of DBC Pierre, a breeding ground for a smart and evil narrative about the modern world, about methods of manipulating mass consciousness, about the sins and weaknesses of modern man.

For the author, DBC Pierre (b. 1961, real name Peter Finlay), this novel, which unexpectedly won the Booker Prize in 2003, became the first published book.