Hard News

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In an unnamed California city that resembles San Diego, two newspapers, the Post and the Beacon, are duking it out for survival. A seeming break for the Post comes when two of its reporters, the down-and-out Gideon McCarthy and Prentice ``News'' LaFontaine, stumble onto the biggest story of their careers: the discovery of the body of a high-priced prostitute in the desert shortly after she has testified at a grand jury looking into police corruption. Snooping down various leads, the reporters uncover a shady real-estate development and an orgy masquerading as a political benefit, as well as a string of crooked cops and scared streetwalkers. The story line, which generates both suspense and steam, takes a grim turn when a major character is bludgeoned to death, then a disappointing one with a deus-ex-machina climax that undermines narrative credibility. Throughout, Sullivan's Post newsroom pulsates with captivating weirdness. If the chief political reporter isn't bawling about his infertility, the obit writer is practicing karate on a magnolia tree; if one assistant managing editor isn't howling like a dog, the other is heading for a motel room to act out scenes from romance novels. Sullivan (The Fall Line), a former investigative reporter in San Diego, has created some memorable characters here-though it's difficult to believe that so many of his villains fall for the old hidden microphone trick. (Nov.)

Joe Collins

This novel, almost an anomaly in the days of high-tech, online news and information, is about the inner workings of a big-city newspaper. Our hero is Gideon McCarthy, who juggles his time between his adopted children and a job on the night beat at the "Post", a daily in a southwestern city. Gideon, like virtually everyone else in this book and it's overloaded with characters, has a dirty little secret: he plagiarized someone else's work. But he's basically a good guy, who stumbles onto a story possibly involving police involvement in a murder. Throughout, Sullivan is playful with his characters, who run the gamut of ethnic backgrounds and display various proclivities. Unfortunately, Sullivan chooses to kill off one of the most engaging characters two-thirds of the way through, setting up a conclusion that would dizzy a Rhodes scholar. "Hard News" is basically good fun despite some of the confusing parts, but it gamely tackles the area where newspapers still hold sway over more instantaneous TV and radio: the continuing exposeof corruption in city government. Perhaps Sullivan would have done well to set his novel in, say, the 1940s, simply because these days, with more of its readers swayed by more sexy news like the O. J. Simpson trial, it's questionable whether the newspaper novel as we know it is still news.