Deadline

By the author of The Worm in the Rose , this is a moving, poetic thriller featured in a BBC-TV production, about a once-famous foreign correspondent, Granville Jones of London's Fleet Street. When Jones fell in love with Romy Burton, he left England to live with her on the island emirate in the Persian Gulf where they met. After Romy's death, Jones stayed on, growing old and forgotten except as a stringer for a British daily. But now rumors of the emir's abdication recall the aging, ailing newsman to action, especially when TV crews invade the island and broadcast ``information'' disseminated by plotters of a coup d'etat. Taking great risks to get out the true account of the situation, Jones, by his deeds and in his recollection, evokes the memory of heroes of pre-electronic print journalism, reporters almost fanatically devoted to covering the news in depth. (Oct.)