Books: Behind the Front Page

THE WHOLE TRUTH by Robert Daley. 409 pages. New American Library. $5.95.

Even before publication, Robert Daley's satirical roman à clef about a Great New York Newspaper set off much who's-who gossip in the city room of a Great New York Newspaper. Who, for example, is Paul Pettibon, the Paris bureau chief with the ego of a De Gaulle and a sense of insecurity to rival that of Charlie Brown's pal Linus? Who is Jack L. Banglehorster, the slow-moving, ruminative foreign editor who feels that his first duty is "to report the same news the opposition papers reported"?

No matter whom they may...