Night Talk

Late-night talk-show host Noory (Talking to the Dead, with Rosemary Ellen Guiley) makes his fiction debut with a tense, paranoia-fueled conspiracy thriller. Ethan Shaw, an anti-surveillance hacker, has discovered evidence of a government cover-up of extensive alien involvement in our world. Soon after appearing on L.A.-based talk-show host Greg Nowell’s program devoted to the paranormal, Ethan takes a fatal dive from the window of a high building. When agents from Interagency, a secret government group, visit Greg looking for a file that they think Ethan gave him, Greg flees with Alyssa Neal, who claims to have worked with Ethan at the satellite-controlling National Reconnaissance Office, to try to track down the file before the government finds it or kills them. Snippets of actual articles from such sources as Newsweek and the New York Times about governmental overreach and UFOs lend verisimilitude to the predictable, exposition-heavy story line. Those who buy in to the novel’s antitechnology, anti–Big Brother worldview will find a lot to like. [em]Agent: David Vigliano, Vigliano Associates. (July) [/em]