Books: Spoken word

Writing only to be heard is an interesting new territory, somewhere between the art of the screenplay and that of the novel. More than a year ago I wrote in this column that before long the achievement of a two- or three-hour audio-reading would be looked upon as a creative challenge in its own right. And now it's happened. Tom Wolfe, a writer who has always been fascinated by the cutting edge of technology and its effect on society, has decided to issue his latest work exclusively in spoken word form - for good reason. The plot of Ambush at Fort Bragg (BBC, pounds 9.99) requires a certain blindness in the listener which no other medium can provide. Our surmises as to its outcome are the wilder and more terrifying for our eyes not being anchored to the neat black- and-white security of print.

Ambush at Fort Bragg is the story of the secret surveillance of three young soldiers suspected of murdering a gay fellow-ranger, climaxing in their confrontation by a glamorous TV anchor woman. All Wolfe's artistry is employed in leading us to dread the wrong villains; fearful of the atrocities the vengeful soldiers might visit on the stripper who cons them into admissions, we are taken by surprise when the tables are turned. The young rednecks don't emerge as heroes, but it is the manipulators of the secret video footage who become the real enemy, ruthlessly rejigging images and soundtrack to create a specious and artificially dramatic distortion of the truth.

At the end there is, as there was at the end of Bonfire of the Vanities, an incomplete feel. Maybe the effect is intentional: it certainly nags on in the mind disturbingly. As true life does, of course.