Roanoke Times:

Exposing Media Spin

I'm terrified of tornadoes. But what a kick it was to feel like I was caught up in one while reading "Slick," an audacious first novel by Daniel Price that exposes how the mass media manipulate--and are manipulated by--slick, slimy, smarmy flacks for the corporate or personal financial gains of their clients. Said flacks, of course, are also known as professional publicists. The media scams are also known as "perception management."

This expose-in-the-form-of-a-novel involves a storyline about a media hoax of such mind-boggling complexity that I get whiplash even thinking about how to describe it. So never mind. Suffice it to say it is a riveting tale, chock-full of colorful characters, each of whom might well become the subject of Price's second novel. (One minor complaint: Since I am not fluent in "gangsta rap," I found some of the dialogue hard to follow.)

The characters, though, are just bit players in the book's overall focus on modern media culture and its exploitation. The story details, for instance, how politically correct "social causes"--i.e., saving the whales, saving the tigers, cleaning up the environment, etc.--are often sold to the public via "blatant promotional crap" in someone's interest of making a big bundle of bucks. Some of the nefarious schemes that "Slick" describes make the gaudiest of Las Vegas casinos look like cathedrals, the trashiest of low-life showgirls look like Mother Teresa.

As one who worked for a newspaper, this newspaper, for 40-plus years and was a bona fide member of "the media," I certainly don't see this novel as cause for hollering, "Stop the presses!" (Or stop the TV news cameras, stop the tape recordings or the stop the advertisements.) But "Slick," as well as being a darn good yarn, is enlightening--and its readers will find it more difficult in the future to watch the media spin with an unjaundiced eye. (Margie Fisher--9/19/04).