An action-packed tale of murder and political intrigue set in the politically turbulent 1970s.

Irving is a writer and producer with an impressive resume, including four Emmys, three Peabodys and three duPont Awards working as a journalist for major television networks. His debut novel, set in 1972, opens suspensefully with an assassin—a “specialist in the restoration of silence”—planting a bomb on a car, which leads to the death of a prominent journalist and his co-workers. That journalist, Joe Hadley, had just scored a major break in his investigation into campaign finance illegalities by the pro-Nixon Committee for the Re-Election of the President, thanks to a bookkeeper who was suddenly willing to talk. Rick Putnam, a motorcycle-riding courier tasked with delivering film of the interview, is also targeted for assassination but narrowly manages to survive. Irving portrays Rick as a classic pulp-fiction hero: a chiseled, chain-smoking ex-soldier who’s always ready with snappy quips. Although the original filmed interview is destroyed, Rick still possesses a copy, and he’s hunted by assassins intent on making sure that it never makes its way into the news. Irving’s story is relentlessly paced, punctuated by bursts of action and violence, and driven by artfully unfolding suspense. Sometimes, the book has the feel of a classic true-detective novel. However, it’s somewhat overly packed with that genre’s signature clichés; for example, Rick is a loner, haunted by flashbacks of his service in Vietnam. He also enjoys a second identity, thanks to a bureaucratic mistake when his original birth certificate was issued, although the explanation for this contrived plot point is incomprehensible. Also, the dialogue sometimes has a B-movie feel to it: “Being fucked up in the same firefight doesn’t make us buddies.” However, these minor missteps never slow the story’s frenetic journey to its dramatic conclusion.

An exciting and gritty, if uneven, thriller.

Kudos to one of television's best producers for writing the thriller of the year." 
-Sam Donaldson, White House Reporter

"If the phrase 'a crackling good yarn' evokes an era before Twitter, Facebook, cell phones, videotape, DVD's or cable television, welcome to Terry Irving's fast-paced thriller." 
-Ted Koppel, anchor for ABC Nightline, now senior news analyst for National Public Radio and contributing analyst to BBC World News America, and NBC.

"The suspense never lets up from the first page to the last."

 Rick Putnam is a recent Vietnam vet in the early 1970s who works as a courier for a Washington, DC television station while trying to put his life back together after being injured in the war...."Courier" is a tense story set in the days before social media, when news professionals still need to develop film in a dark room and splice footage together. Author Terry Irving clearly knows the inside of the news business in a different time..."

---Reviewed by Kathleen Heady for Suspense Magazine