Search Results for: yesterday's news

YESTERDAY’S NEWS by R.G. Belsky (Interview & Showcase)

Yesterday’s News by R.G. Belsky Tour Banner

Yesterday’s News

by R.G. Belsky

on Tour June 1-30, 2018

 

Synopsis:

Yesterday's News by R.G. Belsky

A classic cold case reopened—along with Pandora’s box

When eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school more than a decade ago, it became one of the most famous missing child cases in history.

The story turned reporter Clare Carlson into a media superstar overnight. Clare broke exclusive after exclusive. She had unprecedented access to the Devlin family as she wrote about the heartbreaking search for their young daughter. She later won a Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary coverage of the case.

Now Clare once again plunges back into this sensational story. With new evidence, new victims and new suspects – too many suspects. Everyone from members of a motorcycle gang to a prominent politician running for a US Senate seat seem to have secrets they’re hiding about what might have happened to Lucy Devlin. But Clare has her own secrets too. And, in order to untangle the truth about Lucy Devlin, she must finally confront her own tortuous past.

**Check out my review HERE and enter the giveaway**

 

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery
Published by: Oceanview Publishing
Publication Date: May 1st 2018
Number of Pages: 343
ISBN: 160809281X (ISBN13: 9781608092819)
Series: A CLARE CARLSON MYSTERY
Learn More about Yesterday’s News & Get Your Copy From: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Oceanview Publishing | Goodreads

 

Author Bio:

R.G. Belsky

R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. Belsky’s crime novels reflect his extensive media background as a top editor at the New York Post, New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. His previous novels include the award-winning Gil Malloy mystery series. YESTERDAY’S NEWS is the first in a new series featuring Clare Carlson, the hard-driving and tenacious news director of an NYC TV station.

 

Q&A with R.G. Belsky

Welcome!
Writing and Reading:

Do you draw from personal experiences and/or current events?

Absolutely!

First off, on current events, I’m a big proponent of the “Ripped from the Headlines’ inspiration for mystery fiction writing. I’m a longtime New York City journalist, who’s worked as a top editor at the New York Post, New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. I’ve covered most of the big crime stories of the past several decades – including Son of Sam, O.J, the murder of John Lennon and many, many others. I was even in the newsroom – and part of creating – the famous New York Post headline of Headless Body in Topless Bar, about a particularly gruesome murder at a…well, topless place. So, when people ask me where I get the ideas for my crime novels, I’ve always said: “I just go to work every day!”

My new novel YESTERDAY’S NEWS is about a missing child cold case in New York City, the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl years earlier who has never been found. As a young journalist, I covered the legendary Etan Patz case in New York, about a six-year-old boy who vanished. Eventually, after years of searching for answers, a man was convicted for the Patz murder – giving his family at least some kind of closure for their grief. My book is about a different kind of case in which there has been no closure.

I also draw extensively on my personal experiences for my fiction stuff. I write about things in New York City, where I’ve lived and worked for many years; I write about places I’ve been or came from like my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio; I write about events in the newsroom (fictional) of course that I’ve seen in my time as a journalist; and, most of all, I draw on many of the colorful real-life characters I’ve met in newsrooms.

None of my characters – like my new protagonist Clare Carlson in YESTERDAY’S NEWS – are directly based on any one person, of course. She’s more of an amalgamation of many wonderful women journalists I’ve known and worked with in the NYC media. Let’s just say that I’ve met a lot of Clare Carlsons in my time!

Do you start with the conclusion and plot in reverse or start from the beginning and see where the story line brings you?

Wow! Start from the conclusion and plot in reverse? Never heard that one before.

No, I start at the beginning and just see where the story line brings me. I should make clear right now though that I’m definitely a “pantser” – not a “plotter.” I never outline my novels. Generally, I start out with an idea of how the book will begin and a vague notion of how I want it to end. The challenge then is writing the rest of the middle of the book. The reality though is that the ending I had in mind frequently changes –or at least the way I get there does – during the writing of the book. I find the characters change too during the writing process. Doing unexpected things or following paths that even surprise me. So the book I end up with can be a lot different than the one I may have started out to do. Hey, it’s a helluva lot more fun that way!

Are any of your characters based on you or people that you know?

As I said earlier, many of my characters – including Clare Carlson in the new book – are inspired in part by people I’ve met in newsrooms during my career. Of course, everyone thinks the character is THEM. No, it’s not. I do appropriate interesting traits, incidents – and even some jokes – from real life newsroom characters. But my characters in the novels are all fictional.

Your routine when writing? Any idiosyncrasies?

Oh, I have a lot of routines and idiosyncrasies for writing.

First, I write early in the morning. Always have, always will. That’s when I’m inspired to write. It can be as early as 6 a.m. at times. I generally have about 3 or four hours of new writing in me before I’m done with that. Then the rest of the day is for reading it, rewriting and editing, and – maybe most importantly of all – thinking about where I’m going to go the next day with the book when I sit down again to write in the morning. I almost never start with a blank page. I have a pretty good idea in my head of what I’m going to be writing about. Even if it does change as I put the words down.

Second, I write all my fiction out long hand. On yellow legal pads. I use a computer for everything else and always worked on a computer as a journalist. But, when I’m writing fiction, writing it out longhand always feels more comfortable to me. Then I put it into the computer afterward. For whatever its worth, I once read that Hemingway used to do much of his novels in longhand too. Then he wrote the dialogue on a typewriter. That worked out pretty well for him.

Third, I love to write in noisy, crowded, hectic places. Probably from my background of working in noisy newsrooms. I can’t write in my home or any other place that’s too quiet. I write in coffee shops, park benches, on trains, on the beach and even – occasionly – in a crowded bar.

Finally, I write all the time. Whether or not I particularly feel like writing that day or have anything obvious to say. I don’t wait for inspiration to strike, I go looking for inspiration on my own. That’s the best piece of advice I can give to anyone who wants to be a writer. Just write! Simple as that.

Tell us why we should read this book.

Hopefully because you’ll enjoy it. That’s the reason I read books from the authors I love. To enjoy the characters, to enjoy the story, to enjoy the whole experience of getting lost in a fictional world for several hours. I try to write the same kind of books that I like to read.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Michael Connelly, Robert B. Parker, Raymond Chandler, Robert Crais, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton and Dennis Lehane.

What are you reading now?

Last book I just finished was A Stone’sThrow by James W. Ziskin, the most recent in his award winning and delightful Ellie Stone series, about a young woman newspaper reporter working at a small, upstate NY paper during the early ‘60s. Before that, it was True Fiction from Lee Goldberg, a quick-moving, satisfying thriller from a longtime Hollywood screenwriter. I also recently finished The Late Show by Michael Connelly. I’ve read every book Michael Connelly has written for the past 25 years or whatever – and I think he’s the most consistently excellent mystery author of our times. And an ex-newspaperman too!

Are you working on your next novel? Can you tell us a little about it?

I have a new book coming out in 2019 called THE CINDERELLA MURDERS. It’s the second in the Clare Carlson series and will be published again by Oceanview next May.

It’s about the seemingly insignificant death of a homeless woman murdered on the streets of New York City who called herself Cinderella. At first, the crime barely gets a mention in the media. But Clare – a TV news director who still has a reporter’s instincts – decides to dig deeper into the murder. She uncovers mysterious links between the homeless woman and a number of prominent and powerful people. Soon there are more murders, more victims and more questions. As the bodies pile up, Clare realizes that her job, her career – and maybe even her life – are at stake as she chases after her biggest story ever.

Fun questions:
Your novel will be a movie. Who would you cast?
Favorite leisure activity/hobby?

I’m a big sports fan, baseball and football especially; I do fantasy sports games; I gamble a bit in Atlantic City; I like swimming, riding a bike and just taking long walks. Oh, and I watch a tremendous amount of TV.

Favorite meal?

Not very exotic, I’m afraid. I’m much more of a basic, comfort food person. Give me macaroni and cheese, a pizza, a good steak or cheeseburger or even just a big bag of popcorn at the movie theater – and I’m a happy man.

Thank you for stopping by CMash Reads and spending time with us.

 

Catch Up With R.G. Belsky On:
rgbelsky.com, Goodreads, Twitter, & Facebook!

 

Read an excerpt:

PROLOGUE

School was always special to her.

Some children hated to go to school. But she always looked for- ward to going back to school each morning. She loved her friends. She loved her teachers. And most of all, she loved to learn.

For her, it was a time of excitement, a time of adventure, a time of new beginnings each day she sat in the classroom—like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon in a field of flowers underneath a blue, cloudless sky.

And so, on this sunny morning, like so many others, the mother and daughter leave their house and walk together toward the school bus that will pick up the little girl.

“What about your lunch?” the mother asks.

“I’m buying it at school today, remember?”

“Do you have enough money?”

“Yes, you gave it to me last night.”

“Right,” she says. The mother knows that, but she’s forgotten. “And remember to come home right after school.”

“You worry too much, Mom. I’m not a baby anymore.” That’s all too true, of course. She is growing up. Just like they all do.

But today she is still her little girl.

The mother hugs her and puts her on the school bus, watching her in the window until the bus disappears from sight.

A little girl who has everything in the world ahead of her. A lifetime of memories to come. And all the time in the world to enjoy it.

OPENING CREDITS

THE RULES ACCORDING TO CLARE

I always tell the same story to the new reporters on their first day.

It goes like this: Two guys are sitting in a bar bragging about their sexual exploits. As they get drunker and drunker, the conversation becomes more outrageous about how far they’d be willing to go. Would you ever have sex with an animal, one of them asks? Of course not, the other guy replies angrily. What if someone paid you $50 to do it with a dog? That’s ridiculous, he says. How about $500? Same answer. Okay, the first guy says to him, would you have sex with a dog for $5,000? The other guy thinks about that for a while, then asks: “What breed?”

The point here is that once you ask the question “what breed?” you’ve already crossed over a very important line and can never go back.

It’s based, I suppose, on the famous old Winston Churchill story. They say Churchill was seated at a dinner party next to a very elegant and beautiful lady. During the meal, he turned to her and asked if she’d be willing to have sex with him if he gave her $1,000,000. The woman laughed and said sure. Then he asked if she’d have sex with him for $25. “Of course not, what do you think I am?” the indignant woman replied. To which Churchill told her, “Madame, we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”

This is a crucial concept in the news business where I work. Because there is no gray area for a journalist when it comes to honesty and integrity and moral standards. You can’t be just a little bit immoral or a little bit dishonest or a little bit corrupt. There is no compromise possible here.

Sometimes I tell a variation of the dog story. I call it the Woodstein Maneuver. The idea is to come up with a new scenario for the Watergate scandal. To speculate on what might have happened if Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (“Woodstein!” in the Robert Redford–Dustin Hoffman movie) had not written their stories that led to Richard Nixon’s ouster, but instead gotten hush money to cover up the scandal. What if Nixon had paid them to make it all go away?

I ask a new reporter to put themselves in Woodward and Bernstein’s place and think about what they would do if offered such a bribe.

Most of them immediately say they would never take money under any circumstances to compromise a story. I’m not sure if they say it because they really mean it or simply because they believe it’s the answer I want to hear. A few laughingly say they’d go for the money, but I’m not sure I believe them either. I figure they’re just trying to be outrageous or different. Only a few reporters ask the key question. The “what breed?” question. “How much money?” they want to know. Those are the ones I worry about the most.

 

PART I

LUCY

CHAPTER 1

“It’s the fifteenth anniversary of the Lucy Devlin disappear- ance next week,” Maggie Lang said. “Little eleven-year-old girl leaves for school and just vanishes into thin air. It’s a legendary missing kid cold case. We should do a story for the anniversary.”

“Lucy Devlin is old news,” I told her. “The girl’s never been found, Clare.” “And after a while people just stopped caring about her.” “Well, you sure did all right with it. You won a damn Pulitzer.” Maggie Lang was my assignment editor at the TV station where I work as a news executive these days. She was a bundle of media energy—young, smart, ambitious, outspoken, and sometimes a bit reckless. I liked Maggie, but she scared me, too. Maybe because she reminded me of someone I used to know. Myself when I was her age.

Back then, I was Clare Carlson, award-winning reporter for a New York City newspaper that doesn’t exist anymore. When the paper went out of business, I moved on to a new career as a TV reporter. I wasn’t so successful at that. They said I came across as too intense on the air, too grating, too unlikeable to the viewers. So, they offered me a job in management. I was never quite sure I followed the logic of that, but I just went with the flow. I started out as an assignment editor, moved up to producer, and then was named news director for Channel 10 News here in New York City. It turned out that I really like telling other people what to do instead of doing it myself. I’ve always been a bitch. I guess now I just get paid for being one.

Maggie looked over at the Pulitzer Prize certificate I keep prominently on my desk at Channel 10. Hey, you win a Pulitzer—you flaunt it.

“You helped make Lucy Devlin one of the most famous missing child stories ever in New York City fifteen years ago, Clare,” she said. “Imagine if we could somehow find her alive after all this time . . .”

“Lucy is dead,” I told her. “How can you be so sure of that?” “C’mon, you know she’s dead as well as I do. Why else would she never have turned up anywhere?”

“Okay, you’re probably right. She is dead. And we’ll never find the body or catch who did it or know anything for sure about what happened to her.”

“So, what’s our story then?” “There’s a new angle.” “Believe me, I covered all the angles on this story a long time ago.”

“Anne Devlin, Lucy’s mother, is telling people she has some new evidence about the case,” Maggie said.

“Anne Devlin always claims she has some evidence. The poor woman has been obsessed with finding answers about her daughter for years. I mean, it’s understandable, I guess, given all the pain and anguish and uncertainty she’s gone through. But none of her so-called evidence ever goes anywhere.”

“Doesn’t matter. We go to the mother and say we want to hear about whatever new evidence she thinks she’s come up with. I tell her we want to interview her about the case for the anniversary. That maybe someone will see it and give cops some new information. It’ll be great TV. And that video—the heartbroken mom still pleading for someone to help her find out what happened to her daughter fifteen years ago—would go viral on social media.”

She was right. It was a good idea. A good TV gimmick. A good social media gimmick.

And that was my job now, whether I liked it or not. I was a long way from winning Pulitzer Prizes or writing thoughtful in-depth journalism. In television, it was all about capturing the moment. And an emotional interview like that with Lucy’s mother on the anniversary of her disappearance would definitely be a big media moment.

I looked out the window next to my desk. It was early April, and spring had finally broken in New York City. I was wearing a pale-pink spring pantsuit to celebrate the onset of the season. I’d bought it at Saks one bitterly cold day during the depths of winter to cheer myself up. But right now, I didn’t feel very cheerful.

“Okay,” I finally said reluctantly to Maggie, “you can reach out to Anne Devlin and see if she’ll sit down for an interview with us.”

“I already did.” Of course. Knowing Maggie, I should have figured she’d already set it in motion before checking with me.

“And?” I asked her. “She said yes.” “Good.” “Under one condition. She wants you to be the person who does the interview with her.”

“Me?” “She said she’d feel more comfortable talking to you than some reporter she didn’t know.”

“C’mon, I don’t go on air anymore, Maggie.” “She insisted on talking to you. She said you owed her. She said you would understand what that meant.”

I sighed. Oh, I understood. Anne Devlin was holding me to a promise I made a long time ago.

It was maybe a few months after Lucy was gone. Anne had become depressed as people stopped talking about the case. The newspapers, the TV stations, even the police—they seemed to have given up and moved on to other things. She felt so alone, she said. I told her that she wasn’t alone. I told her I’d always be there for her. I made her a lot of promises that I couldn’t keep.

“Let’s make a pact,” she said, squeezing my hand on that long- ago night. “If I ever find out anything, you’ll help me track Lucy down, won’t you, Clare?”

“I promise,” I said. “No matter what happens or how long it takes, you can’t let people forget about her.”

“No one will ever forget about Lucy.” I thought about that long-ago conversation now as I sat in my office looking at the Pulitzer that had come out of my coverage of the Lucy Devlin story in what seemed like another lifetime ago. That story had been my ticket to fame as a journalist. It made me a front-page star; it catapulted me into the top of the New York City media world; and it was eventually responsible for the big TV executive job that I held today.

“She said you owed it to her,” Maggie said again. Anne Devlin was right. I did owe her.

 

CHAPTER 2

Lucy Devlin disappeared on a sunny April morning.

She was eleven years old, and she lived on a quiet street in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan with her parents, Anne and Patrick Devlin. That last day her mother had helped her get dressed for school, packed her books in a knapsack that hung over her back, and then kissed her goodbye before putting her on the school bus.

As far as anyone knew, she was with the other students on the bus when they went into the school. The first indication that something was wrong came when Lucy didn’t show up in her classroom for the morning attendance. The teacher thought she was either late or sick, reporting it at first to the principal’s office as a routine absence. It wasn’t until later that police began a massive search for the missing eleven-year-old girl.

The disappearance of Lucy Devlin exploded in the media when the New York Tribune, the newspaper I wrote for, ran a front-page story about her. The headline simply said: “MISSING!” Below that was a picture of Lucy. Big brown eyes, her hair in a ponytail, a gap between her two front teeth.

The story told how she was wearing a blue denim skirt, a white blouse, and cork sandals when she was last seen. It said she loved reading; playing basketball and soccer; and, most of all, animals. She petted every dog in the neighborhood and begged her parents to get her one. “She was my little angel,” Anne Devlin said in the article. “How could anyone want to hurt an angel?”

The whole city fell in love with her after that. The Tribune story spared no emotion in talking about the anguish of her parents as they waited for some kind of word. It talked about their hopes, their despair, and their confusion over everything that had happened.

I know because I was the reporter who wrote it. With my help, Lucy Devlin—just like Maggie had said— became one of the most famous missing person stories in New York City history. Posters soon appeared all over the city. Announcements were made in schools and churches asking people to look for her. The family offered a reward. First it was $10,000. Then $20,000 and $50,000 and as much as $100,000 as people and civic groups pitched in to help the Devlin family. For many it brought back memories of the tragic Etan Patz case—a six-year-old boy who had disappeared from the streets of New York City a quarter century earlier. Little Etan became the face of the missing child crisis all over the country when his picture was the first to appear on a milk carton in the desperate search for answers about his fate. In that case, the family had finally achieved some closure when a man was eventually arrested and convicted for their son’s murder. But there was no closure for Anne and Patrick Devlin.

I sat in the Devlins’ apartment—crying with them, praying with them, and hoping against hope that little Lucy would one day walk in that door.

I’ve never worked a story before or after where I identified so much with the people I was writing about. My access to the parents gave me the opportunity to see things no one else did, and I put every bit of that into my stories. Everyone was picking up my stuff—the other papers, TV news, and even the network news magazines like Dateline and 60 Minutes.

Yes, I did win a Pulitzer for my coverage of this story. The Pulitzer judges called it “dramatic, haunting, and extraordinarily compassionate coverage of a breaking deadline news story” in giving me the award. That was nice, but they were all just words to me. I wasn’t thinking about a Pulitzer or acclaim or my career when I covered the Lucy Devlin disappearance. I just reported and wrote the hell out of the story, day after day.

Eventually, of course, other stories came along to knock this one off the front page.

All the reporters moved on to cover them. In the end, I did, too. It wasn’t that easy for Anne and Patrick Devlin. The police told them that Lucy was probably dead. That the most likely scenario was she’d been kidnapped outside the school that day, her abductor had become violent and murdered her. He then must have dumped her body somewhere. It was just a matter of time before it turned up, they said.

Anne Devlin refused to believe them. “I can’t just forget about my daughter,” she said. “I know she’s still alive. I know she’s out there somewhere. I can feel her. A mother knows. I’ll never rest until I find her.”

Her obsession carried her down many paths over the next few years. Every time a little girl turned up murdered or police found a girl without a home, Anne checked it out. Not just in New York City either. She traveled around the country, tracking down every lead—no matter how slim or remote it seemed.

There were moments of hope, but many more moments of despair.

A woman who’d seen the story on TV said she’d seen a little girl that looked like Lucy at an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. She was standing with a man holding her by the hand near the roller coaster, looking confused and scared. At one point, she tried to break away, but the man wouldn’t let her go. The woman told one of the security guards that there was something suspicious about the man and the little girl, but never found out what happened. Anne went to Ohio and talked to everyone she could find at the amusement park. She eventually tracked down the security guard and finally the little girl herself. It turned out that the man was her father, and she looked scared and tried to run away because she was afraid to ride the roller coaster.

Another time a group of college coeds thought they spotted her in Florida during spring break. Some fraternity guys who tried to hit on them had a young girl in the back seat of their car, and she seemed out of place amid the beer swilling Neanderthals par- tying up a storm in Fort Lauderdale. The coeds told Anne they were convinced it was her missing daughter. That lead turned out to be a dead end, too. She was the daughter of a woman the fraternity guys had picked up the night before. The woman had passed out back in their hotel room, and they were just driving around with the girl because they didn’t want to leave her alone.

And then there was the time the body of a young girl about Lucy’s age and description was found alongside a highway in Pennsylvania. The state troopers found Lucy’s name on a list of missing children and contacted Anne. She drove ten hours through a blinding snowstorm to a morgue outside Pittsburgh, where the body had been taken. The entire time she had visions of her daughter lying on a coroner’s slab. But it wasn’t Lucy. It turned out to be a runaway from Utah. A truck driver had picked her up hitchhiking, raped and killed her, then dumped the body alongside the road. Anne said afterward she felt relief it wasn’t Lucy, but sadness for the family in Utah who would soon endure the same ordeal as she did.

Once a psychic came to Anne and said she’d seen a vision of Lucy. Lucy was living somewhere near the water, the psychic told her. Lucy was alright, but lonely. Lucy wanted to get back to her family, but she didn’t know how. Eventually, the psychic said she saw a sign in the vision that said La Jolla. La Jolla is a town in Southern California, just north of San Diego. The psychic offered to travel with Anne there and help search for her. They spent two weeks in La Jolla, staying in the best hotels and running up big bills at fancy restaurants. The psychic found nothing. Later, it turned out she just wanted a free trip to the West Coast and some free publicity for her psychic business.

Worst of all were the harassing phone calls. From all the twisted, perverted people in this world. Some of them were opportunists looking for extortion money by claiming they had Lucy. Others were just sickos who got off on harassing a grieving mother. “I have your daughter,” they would say and then talk about the terrible things they were doing to her. One man called Anne maybe two dozen times, day and night, over a period of six months. He taunted her mercilessly about how he had turned Lucy into his sex slave. He said he kept her in a cage in the basement of his house, feeding her only dog food and water. He described unspeakable tortures and sexual acts he carried out on her. He told Anne that when he finally got bored, he’d either kill her or sell her to a harem in the Middle East. When the FBI finally traced the caller’s number and caught him, he turned out to be one of the police officers who had been investigating the case. He confessed that he got a strange sexual pleasure from the phone calls. None of the others turned out to be the real abductor either. But Anne would sometimes cry for days after she got one of these cruel calls, imagining all of the nightmarish things that might be happening to Lucy.

All this took a real toll on Anne and Patrick Devlin. Patrick was a contractor who ran his own successful construction firm; Anne, an executive with an advertising agency. They lived in a spacious townhouse in the heart of Manhattan. Patrick had spent long hours renovating it into a beautiful home for him, Anne, and Lucy. There was even a backyard with an impressively large garden that was Anne’s pride and joy. The Devlins seemed to have the perfect house, the perfect family, the perfect life.

But that all changed after Lucy disappeared. Anne eventually lost her job because she was away so much searching for answers about her daughter. Patrick’s construction business fell off dramatically, too. They had trouble meeting the payments on their town house and moved to a cheaper rental downtown. Their marriage began to fall apart, too, just like the rest of their lives. They divorced a few years after Lucy’s disappearance. Patrick moved to Boston and started a new construction company. He remarried a few years later and now had two children, a boy and a girl, with his new wife. Anne still lived in New York City, where she never stopped searching for her daughter.

Every once in a while, at an anniversary or when another child disappeared, one of the newspapers or TV stations would tell the Lucy Devlin story again.

About the little girl who went off to school one day, just like any other day, and was never seen again. But mostly, no one had time to think about Lucy Devlin anymore.

Everyone had forgotten about Lucy. Except her mother.

***

Excerpt from Yesterday’s News by R.G. Belsky. Copyright © 2018 by R.G. Belsky. Reproduced with permission from R.G. Belsky. All rights reserved.

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!


 

Giveaway:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for R.G. Belsky. There will be 1 winner of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card. The giveaway begins on June 1, 2018 and runs through July 1, 2018.
Open to U.S. addresses only. Void where prohibited.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

 

YESTERDAY’S NEWS by R.G. Belsky (Review & Giveaway)

YESTERDAY’S NEWS by R.G. Belsky
Genre: Mystery
Published by Oceanview Publishing
Publication Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN13: 9781608092819
Pages: 343
Review Copy From: Publisher
Edition: eBook
My Rating: 5

**Stop by tomorrow for Q&A with R.G. Belsky**

 

Synopsis

A classic cold case reopened—along with Pandora’s box

When eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school more than a decade ago, it became one of the most famous missing child cases in history.

The story turned reporter Clare Carlson into a media superstar overnight. Clare broke exclusive after exclusive. She had unprecedented access to the Devlin family as she wrote about the heartbreaking search for their young daughter. She later won a Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary coverage of the case.

Now Clare once again plunges back into this sensational story. With new evidence, new victims and new suspects – too many suspects. Everyone from members of a motorcycle gang to a prominent politician running for a US Senate seat seem to have secrets they’re hiding about what might have happened to Lucy Devlin. But Clare has her own secrets too. And, in order to untangle the truth about Lucy Devlin, she must finally confront her own tortuous past.

My Thoughts

Clare Carlson, an investigative and driven journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage on the disappearance of Lucy Devlin 15 years ago, which became a cold case. Now as a, TV News Director, Lucy’s mother, Anne, contacts her stating she has new information. Once again, Clare is on the hunt to find out what did happen on that fateful day. Could Lucy be alive or is it just a mother’s hope?

While investigating this case, the new evidence leads her to have more questions than answers including what is Elliott Grayson, currently in the race for NY Senate race, hiding? His relationship with members of a motorcycle gang, which was the last sighting of Lucy and a grave in NH holding 6 youngster’s bodies that Grayson was part of the task force on the case? What are his secrets?

Clare also has a secret, a big one. Was she the reason that Lucy disappeared? A past that she now has to face.

This book was outstanding!! The suspenseful pace did not let up! So many twists and turns!

The explosive ending blindsided me. So much so that after reading the last word, it took several more hours to process and digest what I had just read! A riveting and thrilling book that held me captive! No question, this novel will be on my 2018 Top Ten Reads!

I highly encourage you to pick up a copy! However, once you start it, just know, that you won’t be able to put it down!

Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

Giveaway:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for R.G. Belsky, author of YESTERDAY’S NEWS. There will be One (1) winner of a $20. Amazon GC, compliments of R.G. Belsky. The giveaway begins on June 1 and runs through July 2, 2018.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

REVIEW DISCLAIMER

This blog was founded on the premise to write honest reviews, to the best of my ability, no matter who from, where from and/or how the book was obtained, and will continue to do so, even if it is through PICT or PBP.
DISCLAIMER

I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review.
No items that I receive are ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM

I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

Slapdash Sunday Topic: News

SUNDAY
Photobucket

This post was drafted before yesterday’s horrific news that came out of Arizona and now seems quite trivial in  comparison.   Please keep all those affected in your thoughts and prayers.
Photobucket
Hosted by Kayla at The Eclectic Element

Slapdash Sunday is a day for your proverbial week ‘leftovers.’ Is there something you wanted to say, but just forgot? Is there something you want to write about, but isn’t worth a whole page? Do you have a random thought, funny or otherwise that needs to be written down?
That is what Slapdash Sunday is for!
  As some of you know, I have mentioned that I am a cable news junkie.  My morning routine is to grab my coffee, boot up the computer and turn the TV on to a cable news station.  The TV is on all day, the volume low, in case there is breaking news or something that may interest me, then I will stop and watch it.  Ever since 9/11, I have been doing this.
  The other night at supper, hubby and I were having a discussion, and I got to thinking that this might make for an interesting topic for Slapdash Sunday!!

  Photobucket
Steve and I were discussing issues that really bother us, even though some of them trivial, this one really annoys me.   And, in my opinion, you don’t have to be Einstein to figure this one out, in this day and age, when the economy is so bad, but this has been done for years by many Presidents.

When a sitting President signs a bill he uses umpteen pens to sign his name.  I read somewhere that each one of those pens cost $100.+.   Wouldn’t a BIC work just as well and cost the government just a few cents?  When I see that on the news, I am so tuned into those pens that I have no clue what the bill is about, because I am so mad at the waste of taxpayer money!!!
So today my questions for you are:  Is there a news item that irks you?  Something where you say..”What are they thinking?”  “Are they serious?”  Something that just irritates you?  Would love to hear your thoughts!!!  Let’s have a Slapdash Discussion!!!

Slapdash Sunday Topic: News

SUNDAY
Photobucket

This post was drafted before yesterday’s horrific news that came out of Arizona and now seems quite trivial in  comparison.   Please keep all those affected in your thoughts and prayers.
Photobucket
Hosted by Kayla at The Eclectic Element

Slapdash Sunday is a day for your proverbial week ‘leftovers.’ Is there something you wanted to say, but just forgot? Is there something you want to write about, but isn’t worth a whole page? Do you have a random thought, funny or otherwise that needs to be written down?
That is what Slapdash Sunday is for!
  As some of you know, I have mentioned that I am a cable news junkie.  My morning routine is to grab my coffee, boot up the computer and turn the TV on to a cable news station.  The TV is on all day, the volume low, in case there is breaking news or something that may interest me, then I will stop and watch it.  Ever since 9/11, I have been doing this.
  The other night at supper, hubby and I were having a discussion, and I got to thinking that this might make for an interesting topic for Slapdash Sunday!!

  Photobucket
Steve and I were discussing issues that really bother us, even though some of them trivial, this one really annoys me.   And, in my opinion, you don’t have to be Einstein to figure this one out, in this day and age, when the economy is so bad, but this has been done for years by many Presidents.

When a sitting President signs a bill he uses umpteen pens to sign his name.  I read somewhere that each one of those pens cost $100.+.   Wouldn’t a BIC work just as well and cost the government just a few cents?  When I see that on the news, I am so tuned into those pens that I have no clue what the bill is about, because I am so mad at the waste of taxpayer money!!!
So today my questions for you are:  Is there a news item that irks you?  Something where you say..”What are they thinking?”  “Are they serious?”  Something that just irritates you?  Would love to hear your thoughts!!!  Let’s have a Slapdash Discussion!!!

Beyond The Headlines by R.G. Belsky | #Review #Showcase #Giveaway

Beyond The Headlines by R.G. Belsky Banner

Beyond The Headlines

by R.G. Belsky

May 1-31, 2021 Tour

Synopsis:

Beyond The Headlines by R.G. Belsky

She was a mega-celebrity—he was a billionaire businessman—now he’s dead—she’s in jail

Laurie Bateman was living the American dream. Since her arrival as an infant in the U.S. after the fall of Saigon, the pretty Vietnamese girl had gone on to become a supermodel, a successful actress, and, finally, the wife of one of the country’s top corporate dealmakers. That dream has now turned into a nightmare when she is arrested for the murder of her wealthy husband.

New York City TV journalist Clare Carlson does an emotional jailhouse interview in which Bateman proclaims her innocence—and becomes a cause celebre for women’s rights groups around the country.

At first sympathetic, then increasingly suspicious of Laurie Bateman and her story, Clare delves into a baffling mystery which has roots extending back nearly fifty years to the height of the Vietnam War.

Soon, there are more murders, more victims, and more questions as Clare struggles against dire evil forces to break the biggest story of her life.

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW

5 stars

Wisecracking Clare Carlson, executive director at Channel 10 but a breaking news journalist at heart is back and investigating another murder.

As you can see below, I am a HUGE fan of this series and have read all the previous books.  And WOW!!!! This book didn’t disappoint!

A very wealthy Charles Hollister is found dead in his condo and his estranged wife, Laurie Bateman, is arrested for his murder.  Clare, the only news person that was there as the police escort Laurie out in handcuffs.  Clare was at the scene as she was supposed to interview the wife, who in her own right is famous, and was going to tell all about her marriage to Hollister, which wasn’t what they portrayed in the public and media.

As Clare starts digging into this story, she feels that Laurie is innocent and wants to help her get out of jail, which she does and even the charges are dropped.  However, she wants to get the scoop as to who really killed Hollister but the more she delves in, the more questions are unanswered and not making sense. Did she make a mistake?  Who really killed Charles Hollister.

Like the previous books in this series, this sequel will transport the reader because of the descriptive nature of the written word and conversations of the characters.  The reader will become one with the story and be totally unaware of what is going on around them.  That’s what happens to me when reading this author’s works.

The suspense is constant and will have the reader sure as to who the suspect is and then BAM!  Wrong!  OK.  Let’s try this again. it has to be this character!!  Not!! Duped again!!!!!

Even though this is the 4th book in the series, it can easily be read as a stand-alone, but I suggest you start with the first book, not only to get to know Clare a bit better but to also have the experience of reading some exceptional writing!!!!!

I absolutely recommend this extraordinary book(s)!!!!

BTW Mr. Belsky, no pressure, but when will the next book be available????

Check out my Review for Yesterday’s NewsHERE

Check out my Review for Below The FoldHERE

Check out my Review for The Last ScoopHERE

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Published by: Oceanview Publishing
Publication Date: May 4th 2021
Number of Pages: 336
ISBN: 160809409X (ISBN13: 9781608094097)
Series: The Clare Carlson Mystery Series, 4 (This can be read as a stand alone mystery.)
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

“Do you know who Laurie Bateman is?” my friend Janet Wood asked me.

“I do,” I said. “I also know who Lady Gaga is. And Angelina Jolie. And Ivanka Trump. I’m in the media, remember? That’s what we do in the media, we cover famous people. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

“Laurie Bateman hired me.”

“As an attorney?”

“Yes, as an attorney. That’s what I do, Clare.”

We were sitting in my office at Channel 10 News, the TV station in New York City where I work as news director. I should have known something was going on as soon as Janet showed up there. We usually met at Janet’s law office which is big, with panoramic views of midtown Manhattan, and a lot nicer than mine.

Janet never comes to see me at Channel 10 unless she has a reason.

I figured I was about to find out that reason.

It was early December and outside it was snowing, the first real storm of the winter. The snow started falling during the night, and by now it was covering the city with a powdery white blanket. Pretty soon the car exhausts and trucks would turn it into brown slush, but for now it was gorgeous. From the window next to my desk, the city had an eerie, almost unreal quality. Like something from a Norman Rockwell painting.

My outfit for the day was perfect for the snowy weather, too. I’d walked in wearing a turtleneck sweater, heavy corduroy slacks, a blue down jacket with a parka hood and white earmuffs, scarf and mittens. The ski bunny look. I felt like I should have a cup of hot chocolate in my hand.

“Why does Laurie Bateman need you as an attorney?” I asked Janet.

She hesitated for what seemed to be an inordinately long amount of time before answering.

“Are we talking off the record here?”

“Whatever you want, Janet.”

“I need your word on that.”

“C’mon, it’s me. Clare Carlson, your best friend in the world.”

She nodded.

“Laurie Bateman wants me to represent her in divorce proceedings.”

“Wow!”

“I thought you’d like that.”

“Is it too late to take back my ‘best friend in the world/ off-the-record’ promise?”

Janet smiled. Sort of.

“How much do you know about Laurie Bateman?” she asked me now.

I knew as much as the rest of the world, I suppose. Laurie Bateman seemed to have the American Dream going for her. Since coming to the U.S. as a baby with her family after the fall of Saigon in 1975, the pretty Vietnamese girl had grown up to become a top model, then a successful actress, and finally, the wife of one of the country’s top corporate deal makers. She had a fancy Manhattan townhouse, a limousine at her beck and call and her face had graced the covers of magazines like Vogue and People.

Her husband was Charles Hollister, who had become incredibly wealthy back in the ’70s as one of the pioneers of the burgeoning computer age. He was a kind of Steve Jobs of those early days, and he later expanded into all sorts of other industries—from media to pharmaceuticals to oil drilling and a lot more. He was listed as one of the ten wealthiest businessmen in America.

When Hollister married Laurie Bateman a few years ago, there were a lot of jokes about the big difference in age between the two—she was so much younger and so beautiful. Like the jokes people made about Rupert Murdoch with Wendy Deng and then Jerry Hall, his last two wives. People always assume that a younger and pretty woman like that is marrying for the money. But Laurie Bateman and Charles Hollister insisted they were in love, and they had consistently projected the public persona of a happily married couple in the media since their wedding.

Except it now appeared they weren’t so happily married.

“Is she trying to divorce him to get her hands on his money?” I asked.

“Actually, he’s trying to divorce her and stop her from getting her hands on any of his money.”

“So the bottom line here is this divorce is about money.”

“Always is.”

“Isn’t there a pre-nuptial agreement that would settle all this?”

“Yes and no.”

“Spoken like a true lawyer.”

“Yes, there is a pre-nup. But we don’t think it applies here. That’s because other factors in the marriage took place which could invalidate the terms of the pre-nup they agreed to and signed.”

“Okay.”

I waited.

“Such as?” I asked finally.

“For one thing, Charles Hollister has a mistress. A younger woman he’s been seeing.”

“Younger than Laurie Bateman?”

“Much younger. In her twenties.”

“Jeez! Hollister’s such an old man I have trouble imagining him being able to have sex with his wife, much less getting it up for a second woman on the side.”

“Her discovery that he was cheating on her, along with a lot of other reasons, have turned Laurie Bateman’s life into a nightmare—a living hell—behind the walls of the beautiful homes they live in. She’s kept quiet about it so far, protecting the happy couple image they’ve put on for the media. But now she wants to let the world know the truth. That’s where you come in, Clare.”

Aha, I thought to myself.

Now we’re getting down to it.

I was about to find out the real reason Janet was here.

“Laurie Bateman wants to go public with all this,” Janet said. “She wants to tell her story in the media. The true story of her marriage to Charles Hollister. We know Hollister is going to use his clout to try and smear her and make her look bad, so that’s why we want to get her version out quickly. What I’m talking about here is an exclusive interview with Laurie Bateman about all of this. Her talking about the divorce, the cheating—everything. And she wants you to do the interview with her.”

“Why me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why not Gayle King? Or Savannah Guthrie? Or Barbara Walters or Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer or another big media name? I’m just the news director of a local TV station here.”

“She wants you, Clare. In fact, I think that’s the reason she hired me for her lawyer. She found out you and I were friends—and she’s hoping I can deliver you to her to do this interview on air with her.”

“I still don’t know why she wouldn’t want to go with someone really famous . . .”

“You’re famous too, Clare. You know that as well as I do. And that’s why she wants you. You’re as famous as any woman on the air right now.”

Janet was right about that.

I was famous.

It could have gone either way—I could have wound up being either famous or infamous because of what I did—but in the end I’d wound up as a media superstar all over again.

Just like I’d been when I won a Pulitzer Prize nearly twenty years ago for telling the story of legendary missing child Lucy Devlin—even though I didn’t tell the whole story then.

“Laurie Bateman’s life with Charles Hollister is a big lie,” Janet said to me. “Now she wants to tell the truth on air about all those lies she’s been hiding behind. Like you did when you finally told the truth on air about you and Lucy Devlin. That’s why she wants you to be the one who interviews her.”

I still wasn’t sure how I felt about all this new found fame I’d gotten from my Lucy Devlin story, but there was no question that if it got me this Laurie Bateman story . . . well, that would be a huge exclusive for me and the station.

“When can I meet her?” I asked Janet.

***

Excerpt from Beyond The Headlines by R.G. Belsky. Copyright 2021 by R.G. Belsky. Reproduced with permission from R.G. Belsky. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

R.G. Belsky

R. G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City.

His new mystery, BEYOND THE HEADLINES, will be published in May 2021. It is the fourth in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station – and follows THE LAST SCOOP, published in 2020. The first Clare Carlson book, YESTERDAY’S NEWS, won the David Award at Deadly Ink for Best Mystery of 2018. The second Clare Carlson book, BELOW THE FOLD, was named Best Mystery 0f 2019 in the Foreword INDIES Awards.

He also is the author of two thrillers written under the pen name of Dana Perry – THE SILENT VICTIM (2019), THE GOLDEN GIRL (June, 2020) and HER OCEAN GRAVE (June 2021 – Bookouture).

Belsky previously wrote the Gil Malloy series – THE KENNEDY CONNECTION, SHOOTING FOR THE STARS and BLONDE ICE – about a newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News.
Belsky himself is a former managing editor at the Daily News and writes about the media from an extensive background in newspapers, magazines and TV/digital news. He has also been a top editor at the New York Post, Star magazine and NBC News.

His previous suspense/thriller novels include LOVERBOY and PLAYING DEAD. Belsky lives in New York City.

Catch Up With R.G. Belsky:
www.RGBelsky.com
Goodreads
BookBub – @dickb79983
Instagram – @dickbelsky
Twitter – @DickBel
Facebook – @RGBelsky

 

 

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

 

 

Giveaway:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for R.G. Belsky. There will be two (2) winners who will each receive one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card. The giveaway begins on May 1, 2021 and ends on June 1, 2021. Void where prohibited.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

 

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

REVIEW DISCLAIMER

  • This blog was founded on the premise to write honest reviews, to the best of my ability, no matter who from, where from and/or how the book was obtained, and will continue to do so, even if it is through PICT or PBP.
  • I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.
  • I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.   I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.
  •  

    THE LAST SCOOP by R.G. Belsky #Review #Showcase #Giveaway


    Notice: Function WP_HTML_Tag_Processor::set_attribute was called incorrectly. Invalid attribute name. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.2.0.) in /homepages/31/d973715622/htdocs/cmashlovestoread.com/CMR/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6078

     

    The Last Scoop by R.G. Belsky Banner

     

    The Last Scoop

    by R.G. Belsky

    on Tour May 1-31, 2020

    Synopsis:

    The Last Scoop by R.G. Belsky

    Martin Barlow was Clare Carlson’s first newspaper editor, a beloved mentor who inspired her career as a journalist. But, since retiring from his newspaper job, he had become a kind of pathetic figure—railing on about conspiracies, cover-ups, and other imaginary stories he was still working on. Clare had been too busy with her own career to pay much attention to him. When Martin Barlow is killed on the street one night during an apparent mugging attempt gone bad, it seems like he was just an old man whose time had come. But Clare—initially out of a sense of guilt for ignoring her old friend and then because of her own journalistic instincts—begins looking into his last story idea. As she digs deeper and deeper into his secret files, she uncovers shocking evidence of a serial killer worse than Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, or any of the other infamous names in history. This really is the biggest story of Martin Barlow’s career—and Clare’s, too—as she uncovers the path leading to the decades-long killer of at least twenty young women. All is not as it seems during Clare’s relentless search for this serial killer. Is she setting herself up to be his next victim?

    MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW

    5 stars

    The Last Scoop is the third book in the Clare Carlson mystery but can be easily read as a stand-alone. Read my reviews for the previous books, Yesterday’s News and Below The Fold.

    As the synopsis states, Clare feels guilt when she learns that her mentor, Martin Barlow, has died. He had recently visited Clare telling her that he was working on a big story, even though he has retired. The police believe it was a random killing but knowing that he was working a case, she steps in. Was it a mugging? Or was it something to do with the information he was gathering?

    With Clare’s innate journalistic drive to find the truth, she embarks on a journey using Martin’s notes. She soon finds out that the D.A. may be involved in corruption, the mob might be involved, and the biggest story is that a serial killer, of 30 years, may still be lurking. But how are all these connected? Could these facts also put her in jeopardy?.

    This series is one of my all time favorites!!!

    With each book, including this one, there are mysteries within mysteries. The writing so descriptive that I lose myself into the story, which allows me to create such vivid imagery as if I was there. The characters are realistic. The suspense continuous and steady throughout the book.

    An engrossing read that held me captive! It was hard to put down! If real life hadn’t interfered, I am sure I would have finished this book in one day. A page-turner!!! And the ending? All I can say is WOW!! I was blindsided.

    Now the hard part…waiting for the sequel!!!

    Another phenomenal read by R.G. Belsky!!

    Book Details:

    Genre: Mystery
    Published by: Oceanview Publishing
    Publication Date: May 5th 2020
    Number of Pages: 368
    ISBN: 1608093573 (ISBN13: 9781608093571)
    Series: Clare Carlson #3
    Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

    Read an excerpt:

    CHAPTER 1

    I was sitting in my office at Channel 10 News, drinking black coffee and skimming through the morning papers when I saw the article about Marty Barlow.

    It was a brief item about the murder of a man on an East Side New York City street. It identified the victim as Martin Barlow. It also said that Barlow was a retired journalist. It did not say Barlow was the first—and probably the best—newspaper editor I ever had.

    The police reported that he’d died from a blow to the head. Apparently, from a solid object, although the object itself was never found. Cops first assumed it had been a mugging, but later backed off that a bit because his wallet wasn’t taken. Instead, it just seemed—at least on the face of it—to be one of those crazy, senseless crimes that happen too often in New York City.

    The article never mentioned Marty’s age—he refused to ever tell it to anyone—but I figured he must be well up in his sixties by now. He was a frail-looking man. He had disheveled white hair, pasty-looking skin and he couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds. He always wore the same old wrinkled suit that looked like it had last been cleaned during the Reagan administration.

    But more than twenty years ago, when I was starting out at a newspaper in New Jersey, Marty Barlow had helped me become the journalist that I am today. He was my editor, my mentor and my friend.

    Barlow was a grizzled old veteran even back then, and I soaked up every bit of knowledge and wisdom I could from him. He taught me how to cover police stories, political scandals, and human-interest features. “Never turn down an animal story,” was one of his mantras. “People love animal stories!” But mostly, he taught me what a noble calling it was to be a newspaper reporter—and about all the integrity and responsibility that went with it. His favorite quotation was from an old Humphrey Bogart movie where Bogey played a managing editor talking about the job of being a newspaper reporter: “It may not be the oldest profession, but it’s the best.”

    I moved on eventually to a bigger newspaper job in New York City where I had a career filled with pretty spectacular moments. I won a Pulitzer prize by the time I was thirty, I scored a lot of other big exclusives and front-page stories for the paper, and became a big media star because of all that. Then the newspaper I worked for went out of business, and I moved into TV. After a few false starts there—mostly finding out that I wasn’t very good as an on-air TV reporter—I wound up on the executive side of the business. First as a segment producer, then an assignment editor and now as news director of the whole Channel 10 operation. Along the way, I found the time to get married—and divorced—three different times, too.

    Marty had helped me get through the highs and lows in my life—both professional and personal—over the years. He was always there for me. He always supported me and took my side in everything. Well, almost everything. Everything except the marriage stuff. Marty could never understand why I couldn’t make my marriages work. “Why don’t you find one man, the right man, and settle down with him for the rest of your life?” That’s what Marty said he had done with his wife. “It’s not that easy,” I told him. “Sure, it is,” he said. “You make sure your marriage is as important to you as your job in the newsroom. Then the rest will take care of itself.” It was good advice from Marty, even though I didn’t always follow it.

    Marty stayed on as editor of the same New Jersey paper where we’d met, doing the job he loved, until he was pushed into retirement a few years ago. At some point after that his wife died, and he came to live with his daughter in Manhattan. Even after he retired though, Marty became very active in local political and community events. He started a website that skewered local politicians and demanded more accountability/public disclosure in New York City government. Then he became a kind of local gadfly—showing up at town hall and council meetings to demand answers from politicians. That was Marty. Still looking for his next big scoop even after he retired.

    We’d kept in touch and he was always asking me to meet him for coffee, but I hardly ever got around to it. Or to checking out any of the various news tips and leads he kept sending me. I never could find time for Marty Barlow anymore.

    Until that last day when he showed up in my office.

    ***

    “Hello, Marty, how are you doing?” I said. “Sorry I never got back to you on your calls and emails before. I’ve been busy covering a bunch of stuff.”

    “Yeah, probably a big, breaking Justin Bieber news story, huh?” Barlow said, without even attempting to hide the contempt in his voice.

    I sighed. Marty Barlow was an old-fashioned journalist who believed the news media should cover serious topics like politics, schools, and government waste the way newspapers had traditionally done in the past. But now newspapers were dying off as people turned to the internet to give them instant news. And TV newscasts, including Channel 10 where I worked, focused even more these days on glitzy celebrity news, viral videos, and all the rest of the gimmicks known online as “traffic bait” in order to increase our all-important ratings and sales. Marty hated that. I wasn’t wild about it either, but I had no choice in the rapidly-changing journalistic landscape.

    “This time the big story was Kim Kardashian,” I said.

    “You’re kidding, right?”

    “I’m kidding.”

    “Good.”

    “Actually, it was Khloe.”

    “My God, what happened to you, Clarissa? The Clarissa Carlson I remember cared passionately about the stories she covered. She wanted to make a difference in the world with her journalism. I miss that woman.”

    Fake news is what Marty called it. Yes, I know that term has a whole different meaning in today’s political world. But Marty had been using it long before that. For Marty, fake news encompassed pretty much everything on TV news or in newspapers or on news websites today. He didn’t just mean the celebrity news, either. He was contemptuous of the constant traffic reports, weather updates, lottery news, and all the rest of the things I did for a living. He complained that there was hardly any real journalism now. He was right. But the journalistic world had changed dramatically in recent years, even if Marty refused to change with it.

    He sat down in a chair in front of my desk.

    “So, Clarissa . . .”

    “Clare.”

    “What?”

    “My name is Clare, not Clarissa.”

    This was a ritual we had played out many times over the years. Yes, my full name is Clarissa Carlson, but I always use Clare. Have ever since I was a kid and decided how much I hated being called Clarissa. Everyone knew that. Friends, family, co-workers, even my ex-husbands never called me anything but Clare. Except for Marty. He insisted on calling me Clarissa. I never understood exactly why, but it had gone on for so long between us that it didn’t seem worth bothering to ask anymore.

    I figured he wasn’t here for a social visit. That he came because he needed my help. Some big scoop he thought he was going to break, even though his days of breaking big scoops had long past. Marty always got very intense when he was working on a story, and this time he seemed even more intense than usual. I asked him what was going on.

    “I’m working on a big story,” he said. “The biggest story of my life. And it’s all because I started taking a good look at one person.”
    I nodded and tried to think of an appropriate response.

    “Who?” I asked.

    It was the best I could come up with.

    “Terri Hartwell.”

    “Hartwell?”

    “Yes, the Manhattan District Attorney.”

    I nodded again. Terri Hartwell was the darling of the New York City media and political world at the moment. She’d been a top-rated radio talk show host in New York for a number of years before she ran for the District Attorney’s job—and surprised political experts by unseating the incumbent. Since then, she’d aggressively gone after crime, corruption and all sorts of entrenched special interests in the city. Which made her a lot of enemies, but also made her popular with the voters. She was even being touted now as a potential candidate for Mayor.

    “I started out thinking this was a story about building corruption. Illegal payoffs to politicians and authorities by wealthy New York City landlords. But now it’s bigger than that. Much bigger. There’s murder involved too.”

    “Murder?”

    “More than one murder. Maybe lots of them.”

    I nodded again. Pretty soon I was going to have to stop nodding and ask more than one-word questions.

    “Who is being murdered? And what does any of this have to do with Terri Hartwell?”

    Now I was rolling.

    “I can’t tell you any more details. Not yet. I’m still trying to figure it all out myself. But this is a sensational story. More sensational than any story I’ve ever covered. And I have to stop whatever is happening before it’s too late!”

    Marty was getting really agitated now, pounding on my desk for emphasis.
    A lock of white hair had fallen over his forehead and his eyes were blazing. He frankly looked insane.

    “Who’s your source on all this, Marty?” I asked.

    “I can’t tell you my source, Clarissa. You know that.”

    “Is it a good source?”

    “All of my sources are good!” he thundered at me.

    He was right about that. All of Marty’s sources were good. Or at least they always had been in the past. But I wasn’t so sure how much I could trust them—or Marty himself—at this point. I didn’t think he was lying. Not intentionally anyway. Marty never lied to anyone, most of all to me. But I did suspect his desperation to get back into journalism in some meaningful way—to prove he wasn’t finished in the news business, no matter how much it had passed him by in recent years—had distorted his judgement and his connections with . . . well, reality.

    “Will you help me? Give me a few days to get all the details together, and then I’ll tell you everything. You’re the head of a big news operation now. You have resources I don’t at your disposal. Maybe we could work on this story together. You and me, Clarissa. Just like the old days.”

    Mostly because I didn’t know what else to do, I told Marty I’d get back to him about it. I told him we’d get together for coffee—like he’d asked me to do so many times—to go over the details of his story and maybe reminisce a bit about old times too. I told Marty I’d call him the next week and we’d meet up at the Sunrise Coffee Shop on the Upper East Side, which was his favorite place.

    Except I never did meet Marty Barlow at the Sunrise Coffee Shop the next week.

    Or any time after that.

    I never got around to calling him back.

    I thought about all that again now as I read the article about Marty Barlow’s death. “Maybe we could work on this story together,” Marty had said. “You and me, Clarissa. Just like the old days.” I didn’t have the heart to tell Marty those days were long over.

    ***

    My boss was Jack Faron, the executive producer for the Channel 10 News. I went to see him now.

    “Problem?” he asked when I walked in the door of his office.

    “What makes you think I have a problem?”

    “Because you never come to see me this early in the morning unless it’s about a problem.”

    “My God, whatever happened to the simple courtesy of saying good morning to the people you work with? What is wrong with us as a society, Jack? Have we lost all civility in this day and age? Why can’t you greet me one time with a cheerful: ‘Good morning, Clare. How are you today?’”

    “Good morning, Clare,” Faron said. “How are you today?”

    “Actually, I have a problem.”

    I showed him the short newspaper article about the death of Marty Barlow and told him about my relationship with Barlow.

    “What do you think about us doing something on the news tonight about his murder?” I asked. “I feel like I owe him at least that much.”

    Faron made a face. “Not our kind of story, Clare. There’s no celebrity or sensational angle, no pizzazz, no ratings of any kind there for us. I’m sorry your friend got killed. I understand he meant a lot to you. But that doesn’t meet the criteria for getting a story about him on our newscast. You already knew that before you even came in here, didn’t you?”

    I did. I was feeling guilty because I’d let Marty down at the end. And I didn’t need another thing to feel guilty about right now. Marty was like family to me. And I had no other family. Well, I did, but that was the other thing I was feeling so guilty about. I’ve screwed up a lot of things in my life.

    “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” I said. “A guy like Marty devotes his life to the news business. And now, when he dies, he doesn’t even rate a meaningful goodbye in what the news business has become today. It makes me sad. And yes, guilty, too, that I couldn’t do more for him, after everything he did for me.”

    “He was an old man,” Faron said. “He died. There’s no story there.”

    ***

    Excerpt from The Last Scoop by R.G. Belsky. Copyright 2020 by R.G. Belsky. Reproduced with permission from R.G. Belsky. All rights reserved.

     

     

    Author Bio:

    R.G. Belsky

    R. G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery, Below The Fold, was published in May 2019 by Oceanview. It is the second in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station. The first Clare Carlson book, YESTERDAY’S NEWS, came out in 2018. It won the David Award at Deadly Ink for Best Mystery of 2018. Belsky previously wrote the Gil Malloy series – THE KENNEDY CONNECTION, SHOOTING FOR THE STARS AND BLONDE ICE – about a newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News. Belsky himself is a former managing editor at the Daily News and writes about the media from an extensive background in newspapers, magazines and TV/digital news. He has also been a top editor at the New York Post, Star magazine and NBC News. Belsky won the Claymore Award at Killer Nashville in 2016. He has finished several times as a Finalist for both the Silver Falchion and David Awards. YESTERDAY’S NEWS, was also named Outstanding Crime/News Based Novel by Just Reviews in 2018 and was a Finalist for Best Mystery of 2018 in the Foreword INDIES Awards. His previous suspense/thriller novels include LOVERBOY and PLAYING DEAD. Belsky lives in New York City.

    Catch Up With R.G. Belsky On:
    RGBelsky.com, Goodreads, BookBub, Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook!

     

     

    Tour Participants:

    Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!



     

     

    Enter the Giveaway!!:

    This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for R.G. Belsky. There will be 2 winners of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card each. The giveaway begins on May 1, 2020 and runs through June 2, 2020. Void where prohibited.

    a Rafflecopter giveaway

     

     

    Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

     

    BELOW THE FOLD by R.G. Belsky (Review, Showcase, & Giveaway)

    Below The Fold by R.G. Belsky

    Below The Fold

    by R.G. Belsky

    on Tour May 1-31, 2019

    Synopsis:

    Below The Fold by R.G. Belsky

    Every human life is supposed to be important. Everyone should matter. But that’s not the case in the cutthroat TV news-rating world where Clare Carlson works. Sex, money, and power sell. Only murder victims of the right social strata are considered worth covering. Not the murder of a “nobody.”

    So, when the battered body of a homeless woman named Dora Gayle is found on the streets of New York City, her murder barely gets a mention in the media. But Clare―a TV news director who still has a reporter’s instincts―decides to dig deeper into the seemingly meaningless death. She uncovers mysterious links between Gayle and a number of wealthy and influential figures. There is a prominent female defense attorney; a scandal-ridden ex-congressman; a decorated NYPD detective; and―most shocking of all―a wealthy media mogul who owns the TV station where Clare works. Soon there are more murders, more victims, more questions. As the bodies pile up, Clare realizes that her job, her career, and maybe even her life are at stake as she chases after her biggest story ever.

    MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW

    5 stars

    I am always a bit skeptical when I start reading the second book in a series, when the first book, in this case, YESTERDAY’S NEWS, blew me away. Did BELOW THE FOLD stand up to the comparison?

    Clare Carlson, news executive at Channel 10 news and former Pulitzer Prize winner for a missing child that she covered when she was a journalist, decides that the murder of a homeless woman, Dora Gayle, would be an item on the evening news, even though it fell below the fold. What she didn’t see coming, was that this story would become a major news story involving a former Congressman, a defense attorney, a stockbroker, an NYPD homicide detective, and a multimedia mogul, who is also her boss.

    The Dora Gayle case fell “below the fold” which does not make it important enough to make the top news story, but Clare had a gut feeling about it. She was right because bodies are starting to pile up since the broadcast. A list of names was left at the scene of the second murder. but what is the connection between these 4 people to the homeless woman? Clare lives and breathes news’ stories, always on the hunt for the BIG story, which this one is becoming, and she doesn’t let up, even when it has come to an end. Or has it?

    Clare Carlson takes the reader through a maze of leads and tips, with some being significant parts of the puzzle and others a dead end. Or is it really a dead end?

    An exciting narrative with lifelike characters that was hard to put down! A heart pounding read with so many moving parts! A frantic story that will have you turning the pages as fast as you can!

    Did this book let me down? Absolutely NOT!! And since there were hints about the previous case that was in YESTERDAY’S NEWS, I can’t wait to see what and where Clare Carlson will take us on her next big story!!!!

    KUDOS Mr. Belsky!!! I’m hooked!!!

    Book Details:

    Genre: Mystery
    Published by: Oceanview Publishing
    Publication Date: May 2019
    Number of Pages: 357
    ISBN: 978-1-60809-324-3
    Series: Clare Carlson #2
    Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

    Read an excerpt:

    OPENING CREDITS
    THE RULES ACCORDING TO CLARE

    Every human life is supposed to be important, everyone should matter. That’s what we all tell ourselves, and it’s a helluva noble concept. But it’s not true. Not in the real world. And certainly not in the world of TV news where I work.

    Especially when it comes to murder.

    Murder is a numbers game for me. It operates on what is sometimes cynically known in the media as the Blonde White Female Syndrome. My goal is to find a murder with a sexy young woman victim to put on the air. Sex sells. Sex, money, and power. That translates into big ratings numbers, which translates into more advertising dollars. These are the only murder stories really worth doing.

    The amazing thing to me is not that there is so much news coverage of these types of stories. It’s that there are people who actually question whether they should be big news stories. These critics dredge up the age-old argument about why some murders get so much more play in the media than all the other murders that happen every day.

    I don’t understand these people.

    Because the cold, hard truth—and everyone knows this, whether they want to admit it or not—is that not everybody is equal when it comes to murder.

    Not in life.

    And certainly not in death.

    It reminds me of the ongoing debate that happens every time Sirhan Sirhan—the man who killed Robert F. Kennedy—comes up for a parole hearing. There are those who point out that he’s already served fifty years in jail. They argue that many other killers have served far less time before being paroled. Sirhan Sirhan should be treated equally, they say, because the life of Robert F. Kennedy is no more or less important than the life of any other crime victim. Me, I think Sirhan Sirhan should be kept caged up
    in a four-foot by six-foot cell as long as he lives—which hopefully will be to a hundred so he can suffer every minute of it. For God’s sakes, people, he killed Robert—freakin’—Kennedy!

    And so, to those who think that we in the media make too big a deal out of some of these high-profile murder stories, I say that’s completely and utterly ridiculous. I reject that argument completely. I won’t even discuss it.

    * *

    Now let me tell you something else.

    Everything I just said there is a lie.

    The truth is there really is no magic formula for murder in the TV news business. No simple way to know from the beginning if a murder story is worth covering or not. No easy answer to the question of how much a human life is worth—or what the impact will be of that person’s death by a violent murder.

    When I started out working at a newspaper years ago, I sat next to a veteran police reporter on the overnight shift. There was an old-fashioned wire machine that would print out police slips of murders that happened during the night. Most of them involved down-market victims in bad neighborhoods whose deaths clearly would never make the paper.

    But he would dutifully call the police on each one and ask questions like: “Tell me about the body of that kid you found in the Harlem pool room—was he a MENSA candidate or what?” Or, “The woman you found dead in the alley behind the housing project—any chance she might be Julia Roberts or a member of the British Royal Family?”

    I asked him once why he even bothered to make the calls since none of these murders seemed ever worth writing about in the paper.

    “Hey, you never know,” he said.

    It was good advice back then, and it still is today. I try to teach it to all my reporters in the TV newsroom that I run now. Check every murder out. Never assume anything about a murder story. Follow the facts and the evidence on every murder—on every crime story—because you can never be certain where that trail might take you.

    Okay, I don’t always follow my own advice in the fast-paced, ratings-obsessed world of TV news where I make my living.

    And usually it does turn out to be just a waste of time.

    But every once in a while, well . . .

    Hey, you never know.

    ***

    Excerpt from Below The Fold by R.G. Belsky. Copyright © 2019 by R.G. Belsky. Reproduced with permission from R.G. Belsky. All rights reserved.

     

     

    Author Bio:

    R.G. Belsky

    R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery , YESTERDAY’S NEWS, was published in May 2018 by Oceanview. It is the first in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station. A second Clare Carlson book, BELOW THE FOLD, will be out in May 2019. Belsky’s last book, BLONDE ICE, was published by Atria in October 2016. It is the third in a series of books from Atria about Gil Malloy, a hard-driving newspaper reporter with a penchant for breaking big stories on the front page of the New York Daily News. The first book in the Gil Malloy series – THE KENNEDY CONNECTION – was published in 2014 and SHOOTING FOR THE STARS came out in 2015. Belsky himself is a former managing editor at the Daily News and writes about the media from an extensive background in newspapers, magazines and TV/digital news. At the Daily News, he also held the titles of metropolitan editor and deputy national editor. Before that, he was metropolitan editor of the New York Post and news editor at Star magazine. Belsky was most recently the managing editor for news at NBCNews.com. His previous suspense novels include PLAYING DEAD and LOVERBOY. BLONDE ICE was nominated as a finalist for the David Award at Deadly Ink and also for the Silver Falchion at Killer Nashville in 2017. He was the Claymore Award winner at Killer Nashville 2016 and also a Silver Falchion Finalist in both the mystery and thriller categories.

    Catch Up With Our R.G. Belsky On:
    rgbelsky.com, Goodreads, BookBub, Twitter, & Facebook!

     

     

    Tour Participants:

    Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!



     

    Enter To Win!:

    This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for R.G. Belsky. There will be 1 winner of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card. The giveaway begins on May 01, 2019 and runs through June 02, 2019. Void where prohibited.

    a Rafflecopter giveaway
    ;

     

    Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

     

    REVIEW DISCLAIMER

  • This blog was founded on the premise to write honest reviews, to the best of my ability, no matter who from, where from and/or how the book was obtained, and will continue to do so, even if it is through PICT or PBP.
  • I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.
  • I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.
  • April 2018 Blog Discussion

    I am taking part in the 2018 Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight!

    The last Saturday of the month, I will be recapping the books I have read for the month, what I thought and the links to my reviews, and what I hope to read the following month.

    April Books Read

    KEEP THE MIDNIGHT OUT by Alex Gray
    Comments: I absolutely love this series. My review will be posted on May 8th.

    YESTERDAY’S NEWS by R.G. Belsky
    Comments: This was the first book I read by this author, but won’tbe the last. It took me hours to process and digest the ending. Incredible! My review will be posted on June 6th.

    THE PROMISE BETWEEN US by Barbara Claypole White
    Comments: A raw and emotional story about mental illness. Great read! (Click on the title to see my review)

    THE LAST TIME I LIED by Riley Sager
    Comments: I had mixed feelings about this book, which I will explain in my review that will psot over the coming days.

    Current Read

    MURDER IS A PROMISE by Giacomo Giammatteo
    Comments: I was given the honor to do a beta read of this book.

    Upcoming May TBRs

    BAD TIME TO BE IN IT by David Burnsworth
    Comments: This is the 2nd book in a series that I enjoyed.

    THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW by A.J. Finn Comments: I keep pushing this book back but hopefully this onth!

    Comments: So many books in my pile so not sure which book will be next.

    Your Turn

    • What did you finish reading this month
    • What book(s) should I add to my TBR list