The Spoiler

A deft and impressive debut novel--a dark hyper-comedy--set in London in the late 1990s during the height of the newspaper wars just before the dot-com tidal wave. Honor Tait, a legendary prize-winning war correspondent (called in her day -The Newsroom Dietrich- because of her luminescent beauty) is now in her eighties and looking back at a career that saw her on the front lines and in the foxholes of every major theater of war in the twentieth century. Tamara Sim, a young feature writer who compiles lists (what's in/what's out, ten best/ten worst) for a newspaper gossip magazine, is sent to interview the venerated -doyenne of British journalists- for a well-respected publication. What starts out as a tango of wills and egos turns into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse as secrets are revealed, lies unearthed, and one paper plays off the other in a ruthless, desperate grab for sensation and circulation.