Books in Brief: The Arizona Project

The Arizona Project, by Michael Wendland (Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 276 pp., $9.95). On the afternoon of June 2, 1976, Don Bolles, investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, was fatally wounded by a bomb that had been placed in his car. The grisly execution might have been arranged by any one of a number of powerful enemies. During the preceding six years, Bolles’s exposés had linked several of the state’s financial and political elite to their counterparts in the criminal world. Reprisal was his reward; revenge would be his legacy. Within a month of the killing, a team of journalists from across the country had descended upon Phoenix and set up headquarters in a downtown hotel. For the next six months the IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) pursued the tasks they had set for themselves, of locating those responsible for the murder of their colleague and continuing his investigative efforts. Wendland, a reporter for the Detroit News, was one of forty journalists who pieced together the sordid story of a state beset by the evils attendant on an influx of organized crime: land fraud, illegal aliens, drug trafficking, bribery, murder for hire, prostitution, gambling—all with the suggestion of collusion in high places. Bolles’s killer was eventually convicted, and he named names. The IRE filed their stories exposing the seamy underside of Arizona, to the accompaniment of threats of libel suits, and their own threats of counter-suits. This insider’s story, though sometimes uneven and awkward, is seldom dull.

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Alan L. Miller

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The Arizona Project, by Michael Wendland (Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 276 pp., $9.95). On the afternoon of June 2, 1976, Don Bolles, investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, was fatally wounded by a bomb that had been placed in his car. The grisly execution might have been arranged by any one of a number of powerful enemies. During the preceding six years, Bolles’s exposés had linked several of the state’s financial and political elite to their counterparts in the criminal world. Reprisal was his reward; revenge would be his legacy. Within a month of the killing, a team of journalists from across the country had descended upon Phoenix and set up headquarters in a downtown hotel. For the next six months the IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) pursued the tasks they had set for themselves, of locating those responsible for the murder of their colleague and continuing his investigative efforts. Wendland, a reporter for the Detroit News, was one of forty journalists who pieced together the sordid story of a state beset by the evils attendant on an influx of organized crime: land fraud, illegal aliens, drug trafficking, bribery, murder for hire, prostitution, gambling—all with the suggestion of collusion in high places. Bolles’s killer was eventually convicted, and he named names. The IRE filed their stories exposing the seamy underside of Arizona, to the accompaniment of threats of libel suits, and their own threats of counter-suits. This insider’s story, though sometimes uneven and awkward, is seldom dull.