From Publishers Weekly:
Picking up where recent headlines leave off, this first novel by Brinkley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (and David Brinkley's son), posits, with convincing attention to detail, circumstances that could lead to full-fledged combat with Nicaragua. In an unnamed post-Reagan administration, Congress bickers over continued aid to the Nicaraguan rebels while a semi-secret task force pursues its own plan to topple the Sandinistas more hastily. Terry Ascher, a State Department up-and-comer, joins the RIG ("restricted interagency group") and pushes for approval of a highly unorthodox plan for aggressive action. Meanwhile, Chris Eaton, a reporter for a small chain of Southern newspapers, moves closer to the story that could make his reputation. Brinkley plots his novel methodically, with few surprises or intrigues until the end. What gives his story its edge is insight into the workings of government--the squabbles, the denials, the carefully planned leaks--that can't be faked. Brief chapter-by-chapter annotations at the novel's end illustrate exactly which points of the plot are based in fact.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal:
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Brinkley brings to his first novel an admirable eye for crystalline detail and a keen ear for a journalist's persistence. Using as his background the contras and Sandinistas of Nicaragua, he imagines a true-to-life saga laced with American meddling and blackened by the vices and excesses of the insurgents and counterinsurgents. His main protagonists are a sharp reporter with deep-throat sources and a White House aide blinded by ambition and, on occasion, lust. Very quickly and neatly Brinkley whips up a plot that is fleshed out by characters similar to personalities very much in the news. Without too much exaggeration the novel can be expected to do for the Iran-contra affair what All the President's Men did for Watergate, albeit not fictionally. Readers of political fiction will hope Brinkley can produce more of this caliber and soon.
- Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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