What is “Banquo’s Ghosts”?

I wanted to pop in here to let “Big Hollywood” readers know about the just-published spy thriller I wrote with my friend Keith Korman. What is it like? Well, think of an episode of “24″ written by Proust. OK, maybe not quite. But it is a thriller with a point of view. We try to keep the plot moving, while satirizing the chattering class and skewering the imbecilities of America’s political/media culture. The basic plot is that a Mahattan-based, dissolute left-wing journalist (Peter Johnson), who writes for a journal edited by a predatory and impossibly shameless editrix (Josephine von Hildebrand), is sent on a rogue mission to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist by an all-but-forgotten CIA spymaster (Stewart Banquo, of the title). Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Larry King all make cameo appearances, among many others. The book’s approach is that the best way to fight back against the mainstream-media/conventional-wisdom complex is to laugh at it.

CHAPTER ONE
The Drunk

He sat in a ramshackle office chair staring at the little red light in the video camera and let the little red video light stare right back. Sounds trickled into his head from the earpiece, the familiar theme music of the cable news show six thousand miles away and then that raspy voice from the guy who never missed the chance to ask a creampuff question:

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