Wing of the Falcon

Franklin's first novel, a thriller set in the Mideast before and during Operation Desert Storm, carries blurbs from H. Norman Schwarzkopf, former Carter press secretary Jody Powell and others. Despite the good words and its apparent insider's take on the U.S. military and Arab customs, however, it's a shrill narrative, marred by clunky prose and melodramatic characterizations. Elaine Landon, still tortured by having seen her husband die in the 1981 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, is a CIA communications expert assigned to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to ferret out a treacherous security leak within the ruling family in the days preceding Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Among her ever-mounting list of duties, Elaine has a major role in the orchestration of the U.S. strike force for Desert Storm. Meanwhile, intrigue abounds among the Saudi ruling class, which includes brilliant, beautiful Naila Saud, a U.S.-trained pediatrician recalled home to consummate a traditional Muslim marriage of convenience arranged by her menacing brother. Interesting insights into Arab culture and mores, vivid accounts of the harsh treatment sometimes meted out to those who break with tradition and incidents of forbidden love are entwined with the high-level machinations of a U.S. military so encumbered by politics as to be nearly nonfunctional. As a Mideast primer, this is engaging though not without prejudice; as fiction, it's crudely manipulative. Any puzzlement over why Schwarzkopf wrote a blurb disappears when the general--who appears often in the narrative--announces: ``Ray, I'm a man of conscience. After Vietnam, I went to the woods for a long time and thought about what had happened. And I said to myself that if it ever came to a choice between compromising my moral principles and performing my duties, I would hang up my uniform.'' Photos not seen by PW. 100,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour.(July)