{"id":10821,"date":"2024-02-13T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10821"},"modified":"2024-02-12T18:52:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T23:52:10","slug":"broadcast-blues-new-from-dick-belsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10821","title":{"rendered":"Broadcast Blues: New from Dick Belsky"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Now that we\u2019ve reached the sixth in former New York City newsman Dick Belsky\u2019s mystery series featuring Channel 10 News Director Clare Carlson, picking up Broadcast Blues<\/a><\/em> is like a rendezvous with an old friend. Belsky is a former newspaperman, as was Clare before her paper folded, and both of them tend to look down just a wee bit on the sometimes dubious journalistic standards of their on-air colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clare\u2019s snarky, self-deprecating sense of humor isn\u2019t universally appreciated around the newsroom, at least by her boss, but as a reader I love it! Even better, she immediately recognizes where a story lies, has a bulldog\u2019s determination to get to the bottom of it, and a keen sense of how to tell it. All her nights out, morning coffee stops, minor deceptions, and manipulation of the information machine take place in a Manhattan that is quite obviously the author\u2019s home turf. His New York, like his newsroom, is the real deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story begins with a page from a diary written by former cop and now private detective Wendy Kyle: \u2018If you\u2019re reading this, I\u2019m already dead,\u2019 it says. In fact, Kyle is<\/em> dead, victim of a bomb planted in her car and set to explode when she opened the door. But who\u2019d want to silence her? Clare\u2019s keen to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kyle left the NYPD on not the greatest terms, accusing her commanding officer of attempted sexual assault. The client list for her agency, Heartbreaker Investigations, is mainly women out to prove marital infidelity. Loaded with some of New York\u2019s richest and most powerful men, that list might generate some suspects. But the police declare the case closed. They say Kyle was killed by her ex-husband who wrote a confessional note then conveniently committed suicide. Clare doesn\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Channel 10 is up for sale, and who knows what new ownership may bring. Clare has always been the station\u2019s news director as well as an on-air reporter who breaks some of its biggest stories. Her boss repeatedly tells her to drop the Wendy Kyle case and focus on her management job, especially at a time of organizational uncertainty. A protagonist who won\u2019t back off is a standard trope in crime fiction, and when it comes to Clare Carlson, everything about her tells you she\u2019ll stick with it, regardless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a personal level, Clare is nearing her fiftieth birthday (kudos to Belsky for not creating another thirty-year-old, size six protagonist) and tells everyone who\u2019ll listen that she\u2019s not at all fussed about that milestone, but she does keep bringing it up. The author has a way of devising a story that is engaging, believable, and moves forward at the rapid pace of the 24-hour news cycle, and his character Clare Carlson is unfailingly entertaining. Naturally, you want Clare to succeed here, not just for Wendy Kyle\u2019s sake, but also because Clare\u2019s dedication to getting the truth out is something that deserves to carry on. Another win for Belsky!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that we\u2019ve reached the sixth in former New York City newsman Dick Belsky\u2019s mystery series featuring Channel 10 News Director Clare Carlson, picking up Broadcast Blues is like a rendezvous with an old friend. Belsky is a former newspaperman, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A cop-turned-private investigator dies in a car bombing. Was it the police brass she threatened? Was it the powerful men whose private lives she was investigating? TV newswoman Clare Carlson is determined to know. Of course, it's never that easy . . . ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,40,1821,261,126],"tags":[2152,589],"class_list":["post-10821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-humor","category-journalism","category-reading-2","tag-broadcast-blues","tag-dick-belsky"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Ox","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10823,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10821\/revisions\/10823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}