Slick by Daniel Price

Slick

Daniel Price

This has to be one of the funniest and best plotted novels I've read in a long time. It's a hilarious take on the world of professional news management in the US and you'll learn unbelievable insider tricks. Pacy and stylish with great dialogue, it's also a feelgood read. PR people are usually the bad guys; one of this book's unexpected charms is to almost persuade you they can be on the side of the angels.

Extract
'It's human nature. We like a good distraction. The more extreme, the better. Not only that, but most of us are so overwhelmed by the complexities of modern existence that we're secretly relieved when the newscasts squeeze reality into a familiar storytelling construct. Don't just give us information. Tell us a tale. Who's the victim? Who's the villain? How does it end? What's the moral? Of course if it's presented too dramatically, we can't accept it as reality anymore and we turn away. That's why they have to be subtle. It's really not easy to please us.'
Parallels
  • The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  • The Book, the Film, the T-shirt by Matt Beaumont
  • The Player - film by Robert Altman