Product Description

While in Paris, New York Mirror reporter Eric Truell lands the scoop of a lifetime. But when a maverick CIA agent starts leaking explosive, highly sensitive secrets to the savvy journalist, his career skyrockets.

As his ties to the CIA deepen, Truell becomes tangled in a dark web of espionage and murder that spans from Washington to Beijing.

Uncovering shattering truths in a realm of deceivers, and even more shocking lies in the world of journalism, Truell will make a perfect spy. And an even better victim . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #341345 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-28
• Released on: 1998-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 366 pages

Amazon.com Review
Here's a thriller that provides plenty of exercise for the brain as well as the viscera, as Ignatius ingeniously explores what happens when a reporter crosses the line between information and covert action. Looking into the secret life of a respected colleague, hotshot journalist Eric Truell finds a much better story than he expected--and a huge moral dilemma, which gets bigger the more he digs. Ignatius's equally smart and exciting The Bank of Fear is available in paperback.

From Library Journal
In this crisply written, fast-paced espionage thriller, an up-and-coming journalist finds he has made a Faustian bargain when he takes information from the CIA. New York Mirror foreign correspondent Eric Truell's expose of French governmental corruption leads him to probe the dynamics of power behind a pending French-Chinese communications contract?a deal that could mean the loss of billions for American businesses. Truell's CIA sources use their information to lure the ambitious but naive reporter into playing their own dangerous game in the murky new world order, where real power resides not with governments but with private enterprise. Ignatius (The Bank of Fear, LJ 6/1/94) brings to this novel his own experience as a reporter and editor. The writing is clean and straightforward, and the situations both in the newsroom and on assignment ring true. Altogether, an exciting book; for general collections.
-?Linda Lee Landrigan, New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Reporter Eric Truell is a young, rising star at the influential but financially shaky New York Mirror. He's talented but also lucky, and luck and pluck get him page-one stories written from Beirut and Paris and assignment to the Mirror's Washington bureau. There he picks up the thread of a bitter, covert economic war being waged by the U.S. and France, and the hint that the dean of Washington's press corps, Mirror-man Arthur Bowman, is shilling for the French--a firing offense detailed in the paper's style manual. Much of Truell's information is supplied by a bizarre CIA agent, and soon enough he is in as deep as Bowman. The intrigue is played out against the background of the paper's struggle to survive; the cultures of Washington, the CIA, journalism at center stage, and global economic interests; and Truell's floundering relationship with Newsweek pundit and talk-show star Annie Baron. The intrigue is compelling and plausible, the subtexts are beautifully crafted, and the characters are vividly rendered. In fact, Ignatius, an editor at the Washington Post, has produced a tremendously satisfying entertainment that richly deserves the best-seller status sure to come: Tom Cruise is set to star in the film treatment. Thomas Gaughan