Paris Correspondent

Ed Clancy and Joe Shelby are reporters for The Paris Star, an English-language newspaper based in Paris. Survivors of missions to Beirut, Kosovo, Mogadishu, and beyond, they are taken by surprise by the Internet age and twenty-four-hour news cycle. Shelby, a larger-than-life character whose escapades as a foreign correspondent are legendary, is not trying to adapt to this new world or its financial cutbacks. He is a relic from a time when print news was in its heyday, when being a reporter meant fighting your way out of an attack in Vietnam or watching a city collapse around you as you called in one last dispatch. As the Star threatens to crumble and shed its staff, old rivalries and ruined passions rear their heads and intrigues of the newsroom boil over. Written in sparkling prose that captures the changing world of a foreign correspondent’s life, Alan S. Cowell’s breakout novel is not to be missed.