THE FLY ON THE WALL

After a drunken newsman dry dives to his death taking with him the story he had been about to break, another reporter in the press room, John Cotton, becomes the fly on the wall seemingly easy to swat in an ugly story of political corruption and collusion involving a new highway. The road stretches from the Organization to the Capitol — the action is firm — and Hillerman, in the pragmatic question of pro bono publico, arbitrates between bad and worse. It will do, even if he did better in The Blessing Way.