The Bad News Bible

DATELINE: Jerusalem. Foreign correspondent Faith Zanetti has her dream job: she lives in swanky overseas hotels, on somebody else’s dime, and she’s in nearly constant danger of being blown up. Bliss. What’s the appeal? With enough sniper-fire, nobody counts your drinks or your inappropriate one-night stands. And with tomorrow’s newspaper deadline always looming, there’s never time to think about the lies you’ve told, the promises you’ve broken, the things you should have done differently. But when Faith’s best friend and favorite drinking pal is murdered, there isn’t enough vokda in Israel to blot out the pain she’s spent a lifetime running from. In fact, there’s only one possible response: light a cigarette and go after the story. The Bad News Bible is the first novel in the Faith Zanetti series. Smart, damaged, and able to out-drink any man in the joint, Faith Zanetti is very much a heroine for today. Reviewers have likened her to Bridget Jones, but in fact she’s much tougher and grittier than that. A better comparison: Kay Scarpetta, as she appeared in the early novels of Patricia Cornwell, but leavened with a gloriously cynical, pitch-black sense of humor.