A Long Walk Up the Water Slide — Don Winslow

NEAL CAREY HAS TO KEEP THE MOB, THE FBI, AND A MAJOR TELEVISION PERSONALITY FROM KILLING HIS NEWEST CLIENT … BUT HE'S TEMPTED TO DO THE JOB HIMSELF.

Sometime student and ever-reluctant detective Neal Carey would rather be finishing a dull doctoral thesis than staring down the nose of a loaded gun … but his new assignment doesn't sound dangerous. All he's got to do is pull off the ultimate makeover: turn Polly Paget … a gum-chewing, foul-mouthed, big-haired broad … into a perfect lady in time to testify in a rape case against Jack Landis, head of the Family Cable Network and America's most beloved family man. But Polly isn't cooperating, and everyone … including a former FBI agent, an obsessive-compulsive hitman, the Mafia, a porn prince, and a slew of tabloid reporters … in on her trail, turning Neal's “simple” assignment into a deadly game of duck-duck �"goose.
In a hellish and hilarious escapade that takes him from the deserts of Nevada to the bright lights of Las Vegas, and finally to a hair-raising climax in shoddily built amusement park, Neal tries to escape the mob's big guns while taking a slippery walk up the world's biggest water slide.