Waiting For Action; In his new novel, a Middle East correspondent skewers the blood-thirsty, self-obsessed war reporter.(The Sand Cafe)(Book review)

Byline: John R. Bradley (Bradley is the author of "Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis.")

When an Iraqi scud missile shakes the Saudi hotel of American wire reporter Angus Dalziel, the hero of Neil MacFarquhar's debut novel "The Sand Cafe" (375 pages. Public Affairs ), it "mercifully interrupts" the tediousness of covering the high-tech 1991 gulf war. "It was as if there was no fighting going on, no dead bodies, no key advances," he reflects as he clambers to the rooftop. Angus is in his 20s, on his first big assignment and in search of an exclusive that might transform him from a wire reporter into a correspondent for one of the major American dailies. The problem is that he's just one of 1,000 foreign correspondents holed up in the foul-smelling hotel, waiting for the action that never comes.

This dark satire of modern war reporting skewers many a real-life self-obsessed war correspondent. It pours scorn, too, on their often cowardly editorial bosses back in Washington, only too willing to compromise in the face of official pressure and to put more energy into urging reporters to avoid sensitive topics than into cultivating their investigative urges.

MacFarquhar, who went to school in Libya and is fluent in Arabic, writes about a world he knows ...