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Slick is Daniel Price's debut novel. Price is a Los Angeles-based writer who runs a media criticism website (AbusedbytheNews.com) and so, even though he claims in the acknowledgments that, before writing Slick, he knew "close to squat about PR and media manipulation", you have to figure it is an area in which he has a major interest.

Slick is fast and furious, as one would expect when dealing with a high-powered guy-behind-the-guy PR mogul -- uber spin doctor Scott Singer (aka Slick).

Price manages to keep the pace fluid and exciting across more than 450 pages. Like the blasts Singer deflects, this is no mean feat. And Price has created a fantastic new literary anti-hero in Singer; with shades of American Psycho's Patrick Bateman (style, attention to detail) and the narrator in Fight Club (solitary personal life), combining with the spirit of The Bonfire of the Vanities.

As Bonfire was a satire of 80s greed, and American Psycho followed up on that with the detached cynicism of its pop culture-fixated author, and Fight Club satirised the consumerism and faceless market greed of the late 90s, Slick is a satire for current times: a feast of pop-culture references -- as well as taking on real events (Columbine, the dubious "murder" of rap star Tupac Shakur, reality television).

Singer's main task is to defend rap star Jeremy Sharpe, aka Hunta. Sharpe's hip-hop music has been picked on by the mass media as part of the problem behind a Columbine-style high school massacre. Scott -- named Slick by Sharpe -- decides to create another scandal to blow these claims out of the water.

The book's plot involves Singer having a minor car crash with a deaf comic-obsessed web designer. He not only develops a friendship with her, but also employs her 13-year-old daughter, Madison, as his assistant. Highlighting the gap between Singer's personal and professional lives, his working relationship with Madison sees the precocious teen quickly place him under her thumb. Her emotional manipulation is a nice irony for a guy who prides himself on getting under the skin of his clients and their problems.

Slick is a razor-sharp satire. Price has been compared to Will Self and Kurt Vonnegut. Certainly, like Self, he can move from bleak, heavily satirical humour to out-and-out vengeful farce. And like Vonnegut, he is a trained, focused cynic. (Simon Sweetman -- 2/28/05)

This review refers to the U.K. version of SLICK that was published in December 2004 by Piatkus Books.