The Journalist: Tip Off

G.L. Rockey
Zumaya Publications (2003)
ISBN 1894942205
Reviewed by Rebecka Vigus for Reader Views (5/06)

It takes a little getting into, but once you do, you wonder if it could really happen. Rockey sets you up as an outsider looking in on the world of politics, mass media, hysteria, and plots to rule the world. It’s all there.

First you meet Zachary Stearn, former Jesuit Priest turned newspaper editor, in a time when most of the newspapers and television stations are controlled by the American government. Stearn’s paper the Boca seems to be either the voice of reason or the voice of anarchy.

It’s Labor Day week-end, the Congress has gone home to be with its collective constituents. Everyone is ready to take it easy when one Miami TV station airs a video of two cops violating a woman they have pulled over then, killing her. Someone has gotten it all on tape. The next thing you know the President has taken to the airwaves asking for calm. The nation becomes anything but calm.

Riots break out, there is a terrorist attack in Seattle, and things get all out of hand. The President takes to the airways again to instate marshal law.

While all this is happening, Zachary Stearns starts becoming paranoid. He gets a cryptic telegram from a friend on Bimini Island and sets out in a storm to learn the “truth.” He takes along his ace reporter Jim Roberts with him. The two meet up with a cult group known as PI and learn there is a tape recording of the President’s three top advisors plotting to plant a tape like the one that has been aired. They have also been behind the terrorist attack, the riots, and manipulation of the media so that the President can take over the world and bring democracy to the world.

The question now is can they get this tape out in time to stop an international coup?

Mr. Rockey gives the story so many twists and turns that it seems more than believable. It makes one wonder what really is the news and what is the political agenda behind it? I hope we will see more from G. L. Rockey soon.

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