When Crawford Sloane's wife, son and elderly father are mysteriously kidnapped, his life turns upside down. As CBA-TV's most celebrated and popular newscaster, he has become a prime target for terrorists. While the TV network is held to ransom, Sloane decides to launch his own rescue mission, and asks Harry Partridge, his colleague and competitor since the days they covered the war in Vietnam together, to head the operation. This is the most perilous assignment either has ever undertaken, and in an uneasy partnership, it will require all their professional and emotional strength. For Jessica, Crawford's wife, is the only woman Harry has ever loved...

The Evening News sweeps from the battle between profit and ethics in the boardrooms and newsrooms of New York, to the clash of idealism and brutality in the jungles of South America, from an FBI investigation of a tragic crime, to a Florida-bound jet carrying a most unusual human cargo.