{"id":6197,"date":"2016-11-11T07:19:53","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T12:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6197"},"modified":"2016-11-11T07:33:13","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T12:33:13","slug":"blonde-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6197","title":{"rendered":"***Blonde Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"spy,

(photo: David Lytle, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

By RG Belsky — This is the third crime mystery in the series featuring New York Daily News<\/em> reporter Gil Malloy, dogged practitioner of a fading profession. Written in the first person, it holds you close to the genial Malloy and his ups and downs\u2014reportorial, romantic, and bureaucratic.<\/p>\n

On the up side, Gil Malloy has fallen into what may be the scoop of the year: a beautiful blonde serial killer is targeting married men cheating on their wives. Malloy’s print editor Marilyn Staley and his internet\/social media editor Stacy Albright want to milk the sexy story for all it\u2019s worth. Keeping these two antagonists happy could be a second career. Another plus, Malloy\u2019s adored ex-wife Susan shows promising signs that all is not well with hubby #2. Is there a chance? Capstone to his good luck, Malloy has a juicy job offer from the man likely to be\u00a0New York\u2019s next mayor.<\/p>\n

On the down side, Malloy discovers the scoop through Victoria Issacs, who tells him her husband’s gone missing. In a former life, Issacs was the infamous prostitute Houston. When Malloy wrote a Pulitzer-nominated feature article about her several years back, neglecting to disclose his quotes were all second-hand and he\u2019d never actually met the elusive Houston, criticism of him and the paper was withering. He nearly lost his job, and the stress cost him his marriage. Saying too much about Issacs now will reveal that Malloy actually knows her real identity and, probably worse, has concealed it from his editors.<\/p>\n

But Houston\u2019s secret isn\u2019t keepable when a hotel maid finds Walter Issacs dead. The knockout blonde who went up to the room with him has disappeared. As the murders keep coming, the chase is on: NYPD after the killer, and Malloy after the story.<\/p>\n

Malloy is a regular-guy kind of narrator with a wisecracking exterior that makes for some lively banter in the newsroom and in his efforts to get back between the sheets with Susan. His colleagues keep telling him his constant jokes can wear thin. He knows that, but can\u2019t seem to stop himself. It is, in fact, his armor.<\/p>\n

Frustratingly, Staley, Albright, and NYPD detective Wohlers repeatedly jump to conclusions about the case, based on their assumptions and a remarkable lack of definitive evidence. The narrative glosses over various routine questions that arise in murder investigations. How is it possible there was no<\/em> forensic evidence at any of these violent crime scenes? No long blonde hair, for instance? How did a woman overpower these much larger, fit men? Drugs are an obvious possibility, but there\u2019s no mention of toxicology tests of the victims until Chapter 49. Although this book is not a police procedural, Malloy\u2019s proximity to the investigation and his evident skills as a reporter suggest he should be asking questions exactly like these.<\/p>\n

Despite these quibbles, it\u2019s fun to spend time with Gil Malloy on another wild ride. Author Belsky is an experienced New York journalist who perceptively describes the woes and conflicts in today\u2019s news business and conjures a realistic, energetic New York City, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By RG Belsky — This is the third crime mystery in the series featuring New York Daily News reporter Gil Malloy, dogged practitioner of a fading profession. Written in the first person, it holds you close to the genial Malloy … 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":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Blonde Ice - a female serial killer of straying husbands. Hmmmm.","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":[52,261,3,126],"tags":[689,688,91,687,99],"class_list":["post-6197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-journalism","category-mystery","category-reading-2","tag-blonde-ice","tag-gil-malloy","tag-new-york","tag-r-g-belsky","tag-urban-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1BX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197","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=6197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6199,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions\/6199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}