Shame The Devil by George P. Pelecanos (Dell Books 2000)

The reverend's thin lips turned up in a gaseous grin. "So you like Edwardtown."

"Yes. How about you?"

"Well, I'll tell you. I've lived in New York and some other glamorous places, too. But it was always my dream to come to a small town like Edwardtown to build a congregation from the ground up."

And to fleece the local hayseeds for everything they have.

"I moved around a lot," said the reverend, "searching for I didn't know what until I came here."

Failure.

"And because I never had a wife or children of my - "

Faggot.

" - this congregation has become my family. I'd like very much for you to become a part of that family."

Salesman.

Boiling A Frog by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus 2000)

Given her pedigree, she was also a Tory target for accusations of selling out in endorsing Tony Blair's reforms. She had become yet another New Labour robot, they said, and had betrayed everything her father stood for simply to further her own career. Yeah, sure, and the band played "Believe it if You Like'. Labour politicians had always been accused of abandoning their principles in pursuit of power, since long before Tony Blair appeared on the scene. It was part of the Tories' time served pincer-movement strategy: if you took a hard line you were a dangerous lefty out to wreck the economy; if you softened your position, you were an unprincipled chancer who'd do anything for a sniff of power. The Tories knew they'd never face the same charge because they didn't have any principles in the first place. How do you ideologically compromise a stance built on greed, materialism and xenophobia?

Consequently, she didn't mourn Clause Four's passing. Holding on to it was a futile gesture of stubborn and misguided faith, like wearing the medal of some mediaeval saint whose canonisation had been rescinded. It was an anachronism and an impossible dream, but far more damaging, it was also a stick with which their enemies had too often beaten them.

Compromise was always depicted as a political sin by those in the grandstand. Those in the game knew that politics is compromise. If you want a party that believes in all the things you do, and with which you disagree on nothing, you'll have to start it yourself, and the membership is extremely unlikely ever to exceed single figures. In binary.

Smoking In Bed: Conversations With Bruce Robinson edited by Alistair Owen (Bloomsbury 2000)

How to Get Ahead in Advertising might almost be the modern equivalent of a satirical pamphlet by Swift.

I think there are elements of that, because being a pamphleteer was the most immediate and accesible way of communicating one's outrage and a lot of people did it. Every day you pick up your Guardian and there's a Steve Bell cartoon about a serious subject that can make you laugh out loud. Comedy is the greatest weapon there's ever been for dealing with politicians. I'd be sitting there with a boiled egg, saying, 'How can people not see what's going on?' I thought I was looking at reality, and I suppose I wondered why no one else was. If you rant and rave like I used to and you haven't got an outlet for it, people think you're a nut. That's when they say, 'Just lie down. A little bit of the old liquid cosh and you're going to feel much better.' I don't do that any more. Sophie says the first time I took her out to dinner I made an hour and a half speech about Margaret Thatcher. That was our first date. She told me that after twenty minutes she just cut off and nodded. And that's what became of the film: most of the audience cut off and nodded.