In the early days of 1991, Arthur Kent got mail like he’d never got mail before. These were Gulf War days and the Calgary-born Kent was an NBC correspondent in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, when Iraq’s Scud missiles started coming out of the sky. Kent went on air as they fell and before the night was out a transformation of not entirely fathomable origins had taken place there in our televisions. Overnight a seasoned journalist of moderate public profile turned into a full-blown American media star, the “Scud Stud.”

Why, exactly? It would have been interesting to hear Kent’s ideas on the subject; if he has any, he doesn’t air them here. A memoir might have accommodated such amplification, but this book only looks like memoir. Not long after the Gulf War, NBC fired Kent – wrongfully, he said as he sued for $25-million. Risk and Redemption,/I> is the story of that suit, and as such it intends on being a legal thriller.

Of course, for that – to keep things lively – you need about three parts thrill to one part law. What we’ve got instead is a courtroom procedural with a bit of autobiography bent round it.

It’s too bad, because in the pre-litigation autobiography there’s compelling stuff. Not so much in its early stages, because mostly Kent skims over his Alberta days (know, however, that he did admire Eddie Shack). But once he gets himself overseas, the footage is fascinating. The memorable writing in Risk and Redemption is here, in Kent’s eyewitness re-creations of what was happening on the ground while history was taking hold of events in Afghanistan, China, Germany, and Romania.

Legally, NBC finally settled with Kent, abjectly apologizing for sullying his good name and paying him handsomely – though in just which handsome amount the two sides agreed not to disclose. And so did the upstanding young man, having Risked his life in fields afar and foreign, find himself Redeemed before the eyes of his profession and his public, not to mention in the pocket.