The Evening News

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Arthur Hailey, who has already trained a fictional searchlight on such
diverse subjects as airports, hotels, the medical profession, and the
world of wheels, once more meshes a suspenseful story with an
insider’s look “behind the scenes.” This time the setting is a
television newsroom, peopled with high-powered talent both before the
cameras and out of sight, pulling the strings that make the puppets
dance. Crawford Sloane, anchorman of CBA-TV, has long been grimly aware
that as a public figure, he is at high risk in a world threatened by
fanatical terrorism. It had not, however, occurred to him that his
family, too, stands in jeopardy. When his wife, their young son, and his
aged father are snatched by drug-financed terrorists in a bid to make
the station a mouthpiece for the propaganda of a corrupt South American
government, Sloane is powerless; he is on record as being opposed to
making deals with kidnappers or terrorists. He is forced to turn to his
long-time rival and nearest competitor, correspondent Harry Partridge,
to attempt the rescue of his loved ones from the remote Peruvian-jungle
hideaway in which they’ve been imprisoned.

The same illusion of live reportage that has sparked his other massive
tomes gives Hailey’s The Evening News all the reality that exhaustive
research, enlivened by the skill of a practiced storyteller, can
provide.