Hacks

Disgusted by the amateurish enthusiasm of public radio stringer Cassandra Benoit, jaded newspaperman T. K. Farrow rescues Cass from a near rape and is shocked when she out-scoops him and captures his heart. 15,000 first printing.

Trite plotting and overdrawn, unsympathetic characters undermine this heavy-handed but very knowledgeable satiric thriller about foreign correspondents from New York Times reporter Wren. When priggish journalistic ingenue Cassandra Benoit, a stringer for public radio, arrives in the fictional besieged Marxist republic of Equatoria, she immediately locks horns with 40-year-old newspaper reporter T.K. Farrow. Cass's fresh, energetic reporting sends the jaded T.K. and his colleagues scrambling to keep up and eventually forces T.K. to collaborate, grudgingly, with this amateurish "news twink." T.K. and Cass soon find themselves in a love affair made problematic by their contrasting philosophies, her meteoric rise to prominence and TV exposure and the escalating violence all around them. Neither T.K. nor Cass is particularly likable, and the evolution of their relationship from antipathy to romance is depicted in banal fashion. In his first solo novel, Wren (coauthor, with Jack Shepherd, of The Super Summer of Jamie McBride) writes with conviction and humor of the day-to-day challenges of journalism in the field and doubtless has fascinating true stories to tell. But this tale becomes disappointingly hypothetical within its amalgamated fictional milieu?the novel, Wren says, is "based, very loosely, on the civil wars I covered in Angola and Mozambique"?and its creaky thriller framework.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A New York Times correspondent (The End of the Line: The Failure of Communism in the Soviet Union and China, 1990, etc.) exposes the less-than-glamorous underside of his heavily mythologized profession. Imagine The Killing Fields with a laugh track. The ``hacks'' of the title are a drunken, wisecracking band of journalists covering a civil war in Equatoria, a fictional country bearing a vague resemblance to Angola. Their leader is T.K. Farrow, an aging print reporter feeling the first pangs of middle age. Hustling currency on the black market, running around the bush in search of stories, dodging government as well as guerrilla bullets, and contending with power-addled bureaucrats and inscrutable CIA spooks, the hacks exist in a state of suspended adolescence that's abruptly shaken up by the appearance of Cass Benoit, a plucky Canadian public-radio stringer. Cass's inexperience at first prompts jeers from the cynical hacks, but the pretty Canuck has the last laugh when she starts scooping her more seasoned competition. Before long, the hacks are receiving ``rockets'' from their editors wondering why Cass is sucking up all the good copy. Meanwhile, T.K. develops a serious crush on her, but work gets in the way as she repeatedly scoops him. Add to that a computer with dysfunctional e and t keys, a publisher who sends T.K. into the field with a teddy bear, and T.K.'s growing realization that he's too old for this business, and you have a formula for some hilarious satire on the romance of the dashing foreign correspondent. Wren's moral: good reporting requires a conscience and a degree of idealism, and viewing a foreign assignment as an excuse for a boozy high-testosterone camping trip is both arrogant and unprofessional. Unremittingly funny, savage--and even tragic--from beginning to end. Wren is never at a loss for an absurd situation or a touching moment. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The "Hackspeak" glossary that opens this lively first novel by a New York Times man who has covered wars and headed bureaus (Moscow, Beijing, Cairo, Johannesburg, Ottawa) for years advises readers that "hacks" are foreign correspondents. In Equatoria, an African nation torn by civil war between its Communist government and a CIA-sponsored guerrilla movement, hacks engage in business as usual--surface reporting, padding their expense accounts--until Cassandra Benoit, a teacher from Quebec "stringing" for National Public Radio, stirs things up. Cass is naive, clumsy, sometimes prissy. She violates the hack code, learning Equatoria's language; insisting that "why" is the most important of journalism's "Five Ws" ; helping hungry or injured Equatorians rather than simply asking "Howdoesitfeel?" Soon "news twink" Cass is scooping the veterans and turning hack T. K. Farrow's put-downs into partnership. An unusually effective blend of sophisticated, hilarious satire (particularly of the media and all sides' political doublespeak) and an involving, believable story, inspiring compassion for Equatoria's people and the journalists caught in the civil war's tragic cross fire. Mary Carroll

T.K. Farrow is a jaded newspaperman covering a low-rent revolution in Africa. Into the considerably underinspired foreign press colony springs Cassandra Benoit, a fresh face stringing for public radio. Annoyed by her amateurism, he saves her life and teaches her the ropes; she, in turn,. changes his outlook. Not much to our surprise, they fall for one another as Cass gets away from the press pack, learns the language, and begins scooping the weary, drunken hacks. She gets badly injured in the climactic battle, and T.K. has the mandatory opportunity to redeem himself by getting involved in the war, rescuing the woman, giving up his place on the U.N. plane, and returning to file the story. The result is mildly amusing if highly predictable. Public library readers who don't want to be taxed will enjoy this first novel by a U.N. correspondent for the New York Times, but it is not a priority purchase.?Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.