The Foreign Correspondent by Alan S. Cowell

This story begins as the narrator, Ed Clancy, tells about the Nonstop News Desk, NND, in Paris with his old friend and abettor, Joe Shelby, to post the Internet news in the wee hours of the morning, before New Yorks papers were up and running. Joe Shelby's job was to call the bureaus in foreign cities and verify the stories coming in over the wires, and then to write the copy and Ed is to post it on the Internet. Early in the story Shelby makes a mistake and covers it up and this comes to haunt them in the end. The beginning of the book lays down the character of Joe Shelby, a foreign correspondent, filling in the details of his past loves and past secrets. He is avoiding the women from his past, but they too are in Paris now. Ed Clancy has settled down in Paris with the love of his life, Marie-Claire Risen, and he doesn't want Shelbys interference. It is the story of the demise of print, "that great, gorgeous, messy alchemy of ink and hot type and whirring reels of paper and working stiffs in stained coveralls." This is an action adventure story, with the drama of love spicing things up a bit. It's a story of revenge, and justice, told with a literary bent. A good read if you hang in there through the set-up. "Alan S. Cowell is a senior correspondent for the New York Times based in Paris."