The Phoenix Diaries — Philip Slater

When Marty Castle's promising career as an actor meets with sudden failure, he joins an international agency created to fight anti-corporate terrorism. Disillusioned and cynical, he is faced with the opportunity to impersonate the Phoenix-a popular radical leader with Robin Hood pretensions. This seemingly suicidal plan is made more plausible by Marty's uncanny resemblance to the slain leader, and by a journal found by the dead man's body. The journal makes clear that the Phoenix has for some time been psychotic, living in a fantasy world, and is no longer the real leader of his organization. What Marty finds when he undertakes this journey is both more ordinary and far stranger than all his imaginings, and in the dream world of the Phoenix he finds what he had lost in his own.