On the staff of the Washington Post for 11 years, winner of a Pulitzer prize for her reporting, Adams appears to have become disillusioned with American broadsheet news as a form or representation of reality. "In Washington," says the night editor in this novel, Stanley Belson, "there were pretty much two ways to find out things: people and paper. People could fudge. Paper, made by government – courts, agencies, committees – was worse."