"'It's a game, Beth,' she drawled. 'It's about the art game and the art of the game.'"

Danny Moynihan's worked in the New York and London art markets. Exhibitor, curator, gallery manager, special friend to Hirst. Damien Hirst provides the rather good cover, all Mondrian colour blocks and miniaturised contemporary art stars like himself, Lucas and the laughable Koons. Given this and his work for Burns' Happy Like Murderers, one might suggest he's found his forte.

Whatever.

Art Spindle is a wheeler-dealer gallery owner. Mr Rhinegold the housebound collector with the last ever Mondrian hanging on his wall. Rapacious Elaine Yoon is a pierced video artist. Beth Freemantle, object of Elaine's (almost) unprompted affection, the ambitious receptionist with designs on her own gallery. Freign is Rhinegold's over-imaginative manservant.

Moynihan's affectionate ribbing borrows something from Mondrian in its blocky narrative. 'A Spring morning, a year ago,' suggests the first; 'Today' concludes the last. Within them, Moynihan continually cuts character to character like a demented Robert Altman. There's drama - an attempted murder - and comedy.

"You are responsible for bringing art to the public. This is our raison d'être. It's us who are the bridge between the artist and the public. We are the educators. Sometimes it's not what the public wants, but eventually they get it."

Boogie-Woogie (named for Mondrian) works almost despite itself. The book is shallow and self-obsessed because - ah, you beat me to it. There is a vacuity at its heart that sucks up pretension like one of Koons' Hoovers. The difference, Moynihan seems to suggest, is self-awareness. Thus one presumes he knows how codding awful that Irish accent is. Otherwise... And because elsewhere he actually demonstrates an affinity with the language: a fat man who allows "his large body to fill the chair like hot lead in a mould"; or, suds rolling down Art's showered body "like old snakeskin."

"Art, he asked himself, did it really mean anything in the real world? In the great scheme of things? Or was it just self-indulgent crap?"

Boogie-Woogie. Surprisingly good.