Book Review: Broadcast Blues

Synopsis:

Wendy Kyle took secrets to her grave. Now Clare Carlson is digging them up.

New York City has no shortage of crime, making for a busy schedule for TV newswoman Clare Carlson. But not all crimes are created equal. When an explosive planted in a car detonates and kills a woman, Clare knows it’s just the big story she needs.

But it’ s not only about the story. Clare also wants justice for the victim, Wendy Kyle. Wendy sparked controversy as an NYPD officer, ultimately getting kicked off the force after making sexual harassment allegations and a physical altercation with her boss. She opened her own private investigation agency, catering to women who suspected their husbands of cheating. Undoubtedly, Wendy angered many people with her work, so the list of murder suspects is seemingly endless.

Despite the daunting investigation, Clare dives in headfirst. But as she digs for the truth, she attracts the attention of many rich and powerful people who will stop at nothing to keep her from breaking the story about Wendy Kyle’s death. And exposing their personal secrets that Wendy took to her grave.

Review:

Author R.G. Belsky knows the news business and his fictional protagonist, Clare Carlson, is a news director for a New York City television station. Broadcast Blues is the sixth installment in the popular and award-winning series that debuted in 2018 with Yesterday’s News. Belsky has published subsequent volumes annually, all of which can be enjoyed as stand-alone mysteries. In total, Belsky has penned twenty novels set in New York City and centered around the media world (he also writes thrillers as Dana Perry). He enjoyed a long career in news, serving as the editor of the New York Post, New York Daily News, Star Magazine, and the managing editor of news for NBCNews.com. He is a contributing writer for The Big Thrill magazine.

But Belsky is quick to point out that writing with too much authenticity and making fictional mysteries too realistic and believable “can sometimes be . . . well, boring.” His career “was never anything like Clare’s,” he relates. “Clare’s story is a lot more interesting than mine. Or any other real-life journalist who goes through the day-to-day drudgery without all the excitement in Clare’s world.”

As Broadcast Blues opens, Clare is about to celebrate her fiftieth birthday and having a bit of an existential crisis about that. She is a thrice-divorced mother of one daughter, Lucy (aka Linda), with whom she only developed a relationship when Lucy was twenty-five years old. She also has a granddaughter, Emily. She has enjoyed a lengthy, successful career in television news. She currently serves as both the news director and an on-air reporter. But the news industry is changing and the station where she works, Channel 10, is being sold. All of the employees, including Clare, are worried about their futures under new ownership. And for Clare, the newsroom is not just her place of employment. It is her “true home. My sanctuary.” She is convinced that what she really needs to prevent being a casualty of the station’s new management taking the newsroom in a new direction is a really big story. To say that she is not on good terms with Susan Endicott, the executive producer of Channel 10 news (whose own job might well be on the chopping block once the sale is finalized), is an understatement. Belsky aptly describes Susan as a “loathsome woman,” “egotistical and ambitious,” and her treatment of Clare is inexcusably despicable. But they form an uneasy alliance in the interest of mutual self-preservation. Because if Clare can demonstrate her continuing value to the station, the job she loves deeply may be secure. And Susan may still be employed, as well, so Clare figures it is in her best interests to maintain a collegial, if not friendly, relationship with her. Outwardly, at least.

Sure enough, “the news gods” plunk a big story right in Clare’s proverbial lap. Wendy Kyle, a thirty-two-year-old former police officer whose two marriages both ended in divorce, operated Heartbreak Investigations, specializing in high-profile divorce cases, primarily scandalous ones. She often testified in court about her findings. She ran ads proclaiming, “We Catch Cheats for You,” promising to secure evidence that a husband or lover was unfaithful with a technique she called The Honey Trap. Wendy was killed instantly when she got into her car, which was parked in front of her Times Square office – right in the heart of Manhattan – and it exploded. The police naturally suspect that her murder is related to one of the cases she was handling.

Clare immediately reports Wendy’s death. Fortunately, she has a source within the NYPD – her third ex-husband, Sam Markham, just happens to be a homicide sergeant and they have remained on good terms. But it’s a dead end. Curiously, Sam is not involved in the investigation. “It’s being handled by people at the top – way above my paygrade,” he tells her. But Sam did hear some scuttlebutt. Wendy kept a diary, and one page was recovered from her office in which she referenced Ronald Bannister, a billionaire whose wife may have retained Wendy. Clare’s investigation is underway.

Clare is a savvy and tenacious journalist who has developed many connections and sources over the years, along with techniques and maneuvers that are highly effective and at times border on unethical. But she knows how to push the boundaries without eradicating them. She is also self-assured, competent, and frequently sarcastic and a bit caustic. Her first-person narrative reveals her thought processes, frustrations, and machinations. It is candid, sometimes self-deprecating and, at times, hilarious. She is self-aware and not proud of the fact that all of her marriages failed. She discovers details about Wendy’s law enforcement career, including the fact that Wendy’s ouster was preceded by her filing complaints of sexual harassment and police corruption, and finds herself empathizing with Wendy, who was both a heroic officer who volunteered at and supported a women’s homeless shelter, and a hot-head who was disciplined for defying authority and engaging in a physical altercation with the man she accused of harassing her in the workplace. Clare observes that Wendy was “a paradox. A talented woman who couldn’t keep her mouth shut and walk away from trouble when she should. I suppose I identified with her a bit because I knew I had some of those same qualities, good and bad.” The more Clare learns about Wendy’s history, business, and what may have motivated her murder, the more intent Clare becomes on finding her killer, reporting on salient developments in the case as her inquiry proceeds.

Belsky surrounds Clare with a colorful and intriguing cast of supporting characters. Janet Wood is her best friend. A successful lawyer, happily married with two daughters, is “very sane and logical . . . like my exact opposite,” Clare explains. But their friendship is unconditional, and Janet offers Clare wise counsel, as well as support and honesty. Clare also respects and turns to Jack Faron, her former boss, from whom she seeks advice “about tricky situations.” She admits to Janet that she is still attracted to and thinking a lot about Scott Manning, an FBI agent with whom she had an off-and-on-again extramarital affair. Reaching out to him for information is risky because she is not currently involved with a man and rather lonely. She is tempted to rekindle her relationship with him, but he is still married, and Clare is not without a conscience. Skirting the edges of journalistic integrity, she enlists the help of enigmatic computer hacker Todd, who has appeared in previous installments.

Belsky has crafted a clever, multi-layered, and action-packed mystery, introducing additional characters and surprising revelations about their potential connections to Wendy’s murder at an unrelenting pace. As Clare moves closer to uncovering the motive for Wendy’s killing, she encounters others who are frantically attempting to destroy the evidence of those links. Wealthy, powerful, and influential characters will do whatever is required to conceal the truth in order to preserve their lifestyles and see their plans come to fruition. That includes terminating Clare’s investigation by any means necessary. Belsky deftly ramps up the dramatic tension as Clare finds herself in danger.

Broadcast Blues is suspenseful, absorbing, and entertaining. Clare is endearingly flawed and, in many respects, relatable and empathetic. She loves her career but is fully cognizant of how youth-oriented television news is. And she is facing an upcoming milestone birthday just when her future with Channel 10 hangs in the balance and Lucy is navigating a crisis of her own. Clare demonstrates a willingness to take potentially lethal chances in order to not only ensure that Wendy’s killer is held to account for the crime but ensure her own continued relevance in the process. But at Clare’s age, what does it mean to be relevant in television news? And what is the cost of relevance and an unremitting devotion to chasing news stories? Clare seeks answers to those and other important questions as she ponders the next phase of her life and assesses her priorities. Belsky provides a thoroughly satisfying conclusion that will leave readers anxious to read the next volume to see how Clare’s choices work out.

Excerpt from Broadcast Blues

PROLOGUE

From the Diary of Wendy Kyle. . .

If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.

How’s that for an attention-grabbing opening line?

I know, I know . . . it’s a bit melodramatic. And I’m not normally the melodramatic type. Really. No, Wendy Kyle is the kind of woman who deals in facts for a living, the kind of woman who doesn’t let emotion cloud her judgment and – maybe most importantly of all – the kind of woman who never blindly puts her trust in anyone.

Especially a man.

Hey, I’m not some man-hating bitch or anything like that, no matter what you may have heard or think about me. I like men. I love men, or at least I’ve loved a few men in my life. It’s just that I don’t trust them anymore.

So wouldn’t it be ironic — or maybe a little bit fitting, to look at it completely objectively — if trusting a man this one time was what wound up costing me my own life in the end.

Here’s the bottom line for me: If I don’t succeed in what I’m about to do in the Ronald Bannister case, well . . . then it is important someone knows the truth about what happened to me.

And that it was the lies — all of the damn lies men have told — that were the death of me.

The contents of this document were among evidence seized by homicide detectives from the office of Wendy Kyle Heartbreaker Investigations, 218 West 42nd Street, New York City

This entry is listed as: POLICE EXHIBIT A

Opening Credits

THE RULES, ACCORDING TO CLARE

Nora O’Donnell is 50 years old. Samantha Guthrie 51. Hoda Kotb 58, Robin Roberts 62 and Gayle King 68.

The point I’m trying to make here is that TV newscasters – specifically women TV newscasters — don’t have to be cute, perky young talking heads to succeed in the media world where I work.

We’ve come a long way since the days when a respected newswoman like Jane Pauley was replaced by the younger Deborah Norville on the Today show because some network executive (a middle-aged man, of course!) decided Pauley was getting too old to appeal to a television audience.

Or when an anchorwoman named Christine Craft lost her job at a station in Kansas City after a focus group determined she was “too old, too unattractive and not deferential to men.” She was 37.

Well, 50 is the new 40 now.

Or maybe even the new 30.

And let’s get something straight right up front here. I’m not one of those women who normally gets stressed out over every birthday that passes by or every wrinkle on my face or every gray hair or two I spot in the mirror. That is not me. No way. I’m not hung up about age at all.

But I am about to turn 50 this year.

The big 5-0.

The half-century mark.

And the truth is I’m having a bit of trouble dealing with that. . . .

My name is Clare Carlson, and I’m the news director of Channel 10 News in New York City. I’m also an on-air reporter for our Channel 10 news show, and I’ve broken some pretty big exclusives in recent years that have gotten me a lot of attention and made me kind of a media star.

But this whole business of turning 50 still seems odd to me.

When I was in my 20s, I was a star reporter at a newspaper and won a Pulitzer Prize. In my 30s, after the newspaper went out of business, I switched to TV news at Channel 10. And in my 40s, I’ve been juggling two jobs: TV executive as the station’s news director and also as an on-air personality breaking big stories.

Turning 30 and then 40 never really seemed like that big a deal for me. It was more fun than tragic. Look at me: I’m 40! But 50? I’m not so sure about that one. 50 is something completely different, at least the way I see it at the moment. I’m not sure where I go with my life after 50.

It couldn’t be happening at a worse time for me either.

Channel 10, the TV station where I work, is being sold to a new owner — and this has left everyone in our newsroom worried about what might happen next. My latest boss and I don’t get along, and I’m afraid she might be looking for a reason to fire me. My personal life situation is even worse. I’ve been married three times (all of them ending in divorce), and right now I’m not in any kind of a relationship. I have a daughter, but she didn’t even know I was her mother for the first 25 years or so of her life — so we don’t exactly have a traditional mother/daughter relationship.

The only constant in my life — the one thing that I always turn to for comfort when my life is in turmoil — is the news.

This newsroom at Channel 10 where I work is my true home.

My sanctuary.

And so each day I wrap it — along with all the people in it and the stories we cover — around me like a security blanket to protect myself from everything else that is going on around me. ]

All I needed now was a big story to chase.

The bigger the better.

That’s what I was looking for right now.

But as the old saying goes: Be careful what you wish for — because you just might get it.

And that’s what happened to me with the Wendy Kyle murder . . .

Part I

THE HONEY TRAP

CHAPTER 1

Susan Endicott, the executive producer of Channel 10 News, walked into my office and sat down on a chair in front of my desk.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Talking to you.”

“I mean about tonight’s newscast.”

“Oh, that.”

“Don’t be impertinent with me, Carlson.”

What I was actually doing at the moment was putting together one of those old David Letterman style Top 10 lists. I like to do that sometimes. My topic today was: TOP 10 THINGS AN ASPIRING WOMAN TV NEWSCASTER SHOULD NOT SAY DURING A JOB INTERVIEW. My list went like this.

10. What’s that red light on the camera for?

9. Yes, Mr. Lauer, I’d love to be your intern.

8. I sweat a lot on air.

7. I can name all the Presidents back to Obama.

6. If it helps, I’m willing to get pregnant as a cheap on-air ratings ploy.

5. Katie Couric? Who’s Katie Couric?

4. No makeup, please. I want to let my real beauty shine through.

3. My IQ is almost in three numbers.

2. Can I watch TikTok video during commercial breaks?

And the Number One thing an aspiring woman TV newscaster should not say during a job interview . . .

1. I have a personal recommendation from Harvey Weinstein!

I wondered if I should ask Susan Endicott if she had any suggestions for my Top 10 list. Probably not. She might call me impertinent again.

“Do you have a lead story yet for the 6 p.m. show?” she asked now.

“Well, yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“The lead story is about a controller’s audit raising new questions about the viability of the city’s budget goals.”

“That’s not a lead story for us.”

“Hence, my yes and no reply to your question.”

“Do you have a plan for getting us a good story?”

“I do.”

“What is it?”

“Hope some big news happens before we go on the air at 6.”

“That’s your plan?”

“Uh, huh. The news gods will give us something before deadline. They always do.”

“The news gods?”

“You have to always believe in the news gods, Endicott.”

Looking out the window of my office, I could see people walking through the midtown streets of Manhattan below on a beautiful spring day. Many of them were coatless or in short sleeves. Spring was finally here in New York City after what seemed like an endless winter of snow and cold and bundling up every time you went out. But now it was spring. Yep, spring – time for hope and new beginnings. The sun shining brightly. Flowers blooming. Birds chirping. All that good stuff.

In a few weeks New Yorkers would start streaming out of the city on their way to Long Island or the Jersey Shore or maybe Cape Cod. I thought about how nice it would be to be in a place like that right now. Or maybe on a boat sailing up the New England coast. Anywhere but sitting here at Channel 10 News with this woman. Except I knew that even if I did that, I’d probably wind up sooner or later sitting in another newsroom wherever I went talking about lead stories with some other person like Susan Endicott.

Endicott and I had been at war ever since she came to Channel 10. That was after the firing — or, if you prefer, the forced resignation — of Jack Faron, the previous executive producer who had first hired me as a TV journalist from my newspaper career and had been my boss for most of my time here.

Jack was a top-notch journalist, a good friend and a truly decent human being. Susan Endicott was none of those things. She was an ambitious career climber who had stepped over a lot of people in her efforts to score big ratings at the stations where she worked before. That’s what had landed her the Channel 10 job here in New York, and she was determined to keep her star rising no matter what it took for her to do that. She had no friends that I was aware of, no hobbies or interests, no outside life of any kind. She was completely focused on the job and on her career advancement.

For whatever its worth, I didn’t like the way she looked either. She wasn’t fat or skinny, she wasn’t pretty or unattractive, she was just…well, plain. Like she didn’t care about her appearance. She wore drab clothes, hardly any jewelry, no makeup that I could see. It was like her appearance simply didn’t matter to her.

Oh, and she wore her glasses pushed back on top of her head when she wasn’t using them. I disliked people who did that. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the way I feel. It was the perfect final trait of Susan Endicott though. I detested everything about her. And, as you can see, she wasn’t too fond of me either.

There were two things that had prevented her from getting rid of me so far.

I’ve broken some exclusive stories that got us big ratings. She did like the fact that I was an on-air media star, even if she didn’t like me. So all I had to do was keep finding exclusives.

Also, the owner of Channel 10, media mogul Brendan Kaiser, had backed me in any showdown with Endicott since she arrived here. Always good having the big boss on your side when you’re at odds with your immediate boss. But Kaiser was in the process of selling the station. We weren’t sure yet who the new owner would be. Maybe it would be some great journalist or wonderful human being that would care about more than profits. But people like that don’t generally buy big media properties like a TV station. So I was prepared for the worst once the new owner was in place.

That meant I needed to keep on breaking big stories.

And I hadn’t done that in a while.

I needed to find a big story in a damn hurry.

“You better come up with a good lead before we go on the air at 6 tonight,” Endicott said as she stood up and said over her shoulder as she started to leave my office.

“Or?” I asked.

“Or what?”

“That sort of sounds like you were giving me an ultimatum. As in ‘or you’re suspended. Or you’re fired. Or your cafeteria privileges are suspended. Or you need to get a permission slip to go to the bathroom. Or . . .”

Endicott turned around.

She glared at me.

Then she pushed her eyeglasses — which she’d been wearing — back on top of her head again.

A nice touch.

Perfect for the moment.

“Keep digging that hole for yourself, Carlson,” she said to me. “It will make it so much easier when the time comes to get rid of you.”

“You have a nice day too,” I said.

*****

As things turned out, it didn’t take very long to find a news lead for the show.

After Endicott left, Maggie Lang — the assignment editor and my top assistant — burst in to tell me we had a big murder that had just happened.

“Someone blew up a woman’s car!” she said excitedly. “On a busy street in Times Square. The victim’s name is Wendy Kyle, and she’s a former New York City cop and a controversial private investigator who’s been involved in a lot of high-profile divorce cases recently. Involving rich people, important people and catching them in sex scandals. Sounds like someone was out for revenge against her. Sex, money, power. This story has everything, Clare!”

Yep, the news gods had saved us again.