Night Never Falls

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY SEP 1, 1987

In 1954, syndicated-columnist Harry Sparrow flies into Dien Bien Phu with a change of clothes, a golf club and his typewriter. Weeks later, as the Communists wrench loose France's hold on Indochina, Harry gets out with typewriter, golf club, a half-dead French nurse named Claudette and expectations for a Pulitzer. In Bangkok, Harry and Claudette marry, even though she's pregnant with the child of a Foreign Legionnaire, a former SS officer, who died in the destruction of Dien Bien Phu. But married life is a tough assignment for Harry, a hard-drinking Hemingwayesque hero, and while he's covering a golf tournament in Scotland, Claudette leaves for Paris to have and raise the baby by herself. News comes that she and the child have been kidnapped in Algiers; Harry flies there to discover the Legionnaire still alive and involved in the Arab fight for Algeria. Struggling to save Claudette and the child, Harry fights his way through layers of intrigue and politics, climaxing in a stunning chase and shoot-out. Shrake, a columnist, screenwriter and novelist (Limo, with Dan Jenkins), spins a powerfully atmospheric, fast-moving tale, making the most of the explosive events of the novel's time and place.