American Psycho was found to be “deeply and extremely disgusting” by Andrew Motion and “the most loathsome offering of the season,” by the New York Times when it was first published. Almost quarter of a century later – in a move which would no doubt delight its controversial author – Bret Easton Ellis’s divisive novel has become the subject of a police raid, after a bookshop in Adelaide was asked to remove copies of the book from shelves when it was discovered to be on sale without the required plastic wrapping.

Telling of Wall Street worker (and psychopath) Patrick Bateman’s adventures through rape, torture, cannibalism, murder and necrophilia, ever since American Psycho was first published in 1991, Australia’s classification laws have given it a “restricted classification” and insisted that it only be sold “in a sealed wrapper and to adults”. This is a decision that Ellis has said he “love[s] ... I told my publisher I want all my books restricted and put in little bags. It’s like a little sandwich!’’

But, according to Jason Lake, co-owner of Adelaide bookseller Imprints Booksellers, the latest edition, featuring an introduction from Irvine Welsh, arrived from the publisher without the necessary wrapper.

“I had a phone call from a lady on Tuesday who was quite aggressive and questioned why we were selling this classified product out of its wrapper. My defence was it came to us like this. There’s no way I would have removed the wrapping,” he told ABC News in Australia.

Following the phone call, on Friday, Lake said he was asked to remove the book from the shelves by the police. “It was very gentle and polite ... I just think it’s ludicrous that this person complained about the book,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

With American Psycho dividing opinions ever since it was first published in 1991 – Joan Smith in the Guardian called it “nasty, brutish and long”, and “an entirely negligible piece of work, badly written and wholly lacking in insight or illumination”, while Fay Weldon called it “seminal” – the Australian bookseller sided with those underwhelmed by the novel, joking that it should be banned not for its content, but its “quality of writing”.

“It’s not a great book at all, but it’s a work of satire, for goodness sake,” Lake told ABC. “It was a comment on that period in America, the whole ‘greed is good’ era ... In a liberal society people should be free to read what they want to read.”

Police confirmed that they had taken action over to ABC. “Police spoke with bookstore staff, who were very co-operative, and the matter was resolved to the satisfaction of police,” said a spokesperson.

The book’s publisher, Pan Macmillan, said that a “small number of copies” of the Picador classic edition of American Psycho – Welsh calls the book “one of the greatest novels of our time” in his introduction – had been released without shrink-wrapping “due to an unforeseen production error”. “When the publisher was made aware of the error, the problem was immediately rectified and copies of the title already purchased without shrink-wrapping are returnable,” a spokesperson told Books+Publishing.