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Their lair is Southern California. Their spawn in the Monarch, the big tin bird, the fourth generation ICBM. Their hunting grounds range from Los Angeles night clubs to the Washington conference rooms to the launching pads of Cape Canaveral. They are the Lords of the Missile. It is six weeks before the first hot firing of the untested Monarch and from every direction the mulitmillion-dollar missile is under attack - from a hostile press, from rival corporations with competitive weapons systems of their own, and from a tough-minded beetle-browed Congressman, a "solids man" eager to break the back of liquid-fueled rocketry. The pressure is on. And in its midst John Vroman, the key man, has quit. Vroman, the PR and Advertising Director, walking out of Western Aerospace's sprawling corporate complex without a word of explanation. Immediately four candidates emerge to joust for his position: Elliott, sold on the value of the Monarch and the job despite warnings of his friends and best girl; Garfield, the cynical publicist, skilled in the ways of the corporation jungle, Koepple, the adman, conscientious, competent but sliding downhill; Henderson, suave, urbane, with a special pipeline into his boss's office. The competition is set, the struggle for power within the corporation mounting as the countdown at Canaveral nears. Who gets Vroman's job? And what happens when the Monarch goes aloft on that bright Canaveral morning, aimed to go all the way the first time in one dramatic shot for the billion-dollar government contract which hangs in the balance? From its details (the care and courting of visiting Air Force brass, the status symbols which separate chiefs from Indians at Western Aerospace) to its big scenes (the crucial Congressional hearing, the big day at the Cape) The Missile Lords is an exciting and authentic a corporation novel as has ever been written, laying bare the insides of today's gigantic corporate empires which vie for the big dollar-the government dollar