This is a book I picked up as part of my summer "book splurge", a moment of madness in my local town when nearly all of the places you can buy second hand books practically give them away. My copy of this book has no publisher's blurb but is covered with snippets of reviews that led me to believe that I would be reading a modern satire (published in 2004) about Fleet Street. I read a couple of random paragraphs and added it to the pile of books that I wanted to read. It turned out to be much more.

A.N. Wilson takes a cast of characters and ties their stories together in such a way that you don't know whether there is any hope in the world. This is a story about the ability to manipulate the truth so that lives are built up and destroyed on a whim. It covers life in modern Britain; the media; religion; modern art; the politics of post colonial Africa; what people hope for in life and how our choices can destroy us into one amazing book. ( )

Satire on the relationship between modern morality and the media, focussing on a fictitious tabloid newspaper and its shady proprieter. Wilson draws on his own experiences of the gutter press, even creating a thinly veiled parody of himself in the timid L.P. Watson. Great fun, and with a particularly poignant message. ( )