Tale of the Sardonic Tempting of a Journalistic Soul

To promote “A Firing Offense,” the new novel by Washington Post Editor David Ignatius, Random House has provided reviewers with a brochure chock-full of details about last year’s $1.1-million sale of the book to Paramount and Tom Cruise’s company (with back bonuses that could push that amount up to $1.3 mil). Surely the publisher doesn’t believe green-with-envy to be the mood of choice for eliciting positive reviews.

Still, as Ignatius’ tale of journalistic ethics avows, laborers in the newsprint vineyards honor a higher code than the average joe. Therefore we must try to get past the Hollywood nonsense (Raymond Chandler called it “fairy gold”) and focus on the job of assessing the value of the book to readers.

I should issue a warning to Cruise fans that if they are expecting “A Firing Offense” to be a spy yarn as frantic as “Mission Impossible,” they are sure to be disappointed. This isn’t a spy novel exactly. “Firing” is not overly concerned with the hugger-mugger of intelligence operations.

It is a compelling, clever morality tale in which an upwardly mobile young newsman, Eric Truell, is tempted by the devil, in this case the CIA to sell his journalistic soul for a big story.

The scoop initially has to do with an evil French cabal known as the Secret Power, which Truell exposes with the help of a delightfully eccentric CIA agent named Rupert Cohen. Cohen, who wears a wristwatch with Mao on its dial, yearns to quit spookdom for the newsroom. “I want to be a real man, like George Will.”

But when Truell explains that his paper has a policy against hiring former spies, the agent peevishly tells him that they’ve had one on the payroll for years. He claims that revered political columnist Arthur Bowman has been in the pocket of French Intelligence throughout most of his illustrious career. And, to add a time element to the mix, Cohen notes that the Great Man is about to unleash a series of articles jeopardizing America’s bid to create a communications system for China. With the U.S. out, the $30-billion contract will go to, you guessed it, France.

Truell’s quandary is this: in order to get the evidence needed to expose Bowman’s connection to French Intelligence, he will have to hop into bed with the CIA, which, according to the journalistic code, is just about as reprehensible as Bowman spying for the French. It’s a nicely vexatious situation Ignatius has created for his protagonist. The resolution is both credible and satisfying. And along the way, we’re treated to a number of well-drawn characters.

About that million-plus movie sale: You’ll lose Ignatius’ crisp, educated prose, his sly subtleties and probably much of his careful plotting. Like narrator Truell’s description of his sudden fame after exposing the cabal: “With my editors’ blessing, I appeared on ‘Nightline’ and was profiled in the press sections of both Time and Newsweek. People magazine sent out a photographer, but they were running their special ‘High School Sweethearts’ issue that week with pictures of Hollywood stars and the people they took to the senior prom so they never ran the article about me.”

Or a smooth CIA operative’s summation: “Think of a really obnoxious little brother who does everything he can to make trouble for you. . . . That’s France in dealing with the U.S.”

Imagine making a movie that would take shots at Time Warner and the film-loving French? Now that would really be a mission impossible.