Sunday, March 06, 2005
 
Were I a Cynical, Suspicious Man

If I were a cynic, or a hopeful writer of suspense fiction, I might make something different of this story: Italian Journalist Rejects U.S. Account.

Okay, we have these salient events:
  1. Sympathetic "journalist" disappears, "kidnapped" by "insurgents."

  2. Releases a tape making normal coerced political demands, which doesn't differ from her normal uncoerced political demands.

  3. Her government "negotiates" her release, which involves paying ransom money.

  4. Upon her release, she claims the United States military "targeted her"--but missed--with 300 or 400 shots--after which her car looks like this, but

  5. The only casualty is the Italian intelligence officer that acted as the bag man, who took one round to the temple, almost execution style; everyone else in the car miraculously survived.
And when the heat cools off and the journalist "recovered," she would retire to Switzerland with her Iraqi lover on their ill-gotten loot.

I would title the book Ill Manifest.

Update: Real-life mystery writer Roger L. Simon offers a plot.

Update II: Baldilocks, who deploys a Ludlumian title for a post in The Sgrena Gambit, indicates that the car depicted above might not be the car alledgedly shot 300-400 times.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:36 PM
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