{"id":7332,"date":"2018-07-02T06:23:18","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T10:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7332"},"modified":"2018-07-02T06:23:18","modified_gmt":"2018-07-02T10:23:18","slug":"yesterdays-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7332","title":{"rendered":"****Yesterday’s News"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ace

(photo: Heinrich Klaffs, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

By RG Belsky \u2013 Dick Belsky\u2019s long association with New York City news media\u2014newspapers, magazines, and television\u2014stand him in good stead in his Manhattan-based crime novels. He makes the newsroom politics entertaining, and the city\u2019s bustle and bravado leap off the page. They become places you want to be.<\/p>\n

In this book, he offers a new protagonist, Clare Carlson, former superstar newspaper reporter whose employer (like so many) went out of business. Now she\u2019s the news director for Channel 10 News, and while she likes some aspects of the job\u2014\u201ctelling other people what to do,\u201d she says\u2014she clearly believes television \u201cnews\u201d is a lesser form of journalism, well beneath her talents and skills. She\u2019s probably right.<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s News<\/em> is a title with multiple meanings, referring to the newspaper business, Carlson herself, and the one big story from fifteen years earlier that made her reputation and earned her a Pulitzer Prize\u2014the disappearance of eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin, plucked from her Gramercy Park neighborhood and never found.<\/p>\n

The anniversary of Lucy\u2019s disappearance is fast approaching when you feel the first twist of Belsky\u2019s knife. When she was working on the story, Carlson befriended Lucy\u2019s mother Anne, and now Anne is dying of cancer, desperate for closure. She has received an anonymous email claiming that, shortly after her disappearance, Lucy was seen at a motorcycle convention in rural New Hampshire, riding with someone named Elliott. She wants to talk to Carlson.<\/p>\n

Like almost everyone else, Carlson assumes Lucy was dead long ago. Can she\u2014should she?\u2014rekindle her relationship with Anne? It\u2019s a \u201cgood TV gimmick,\u201d she thinks, though she has reasons to be reluctant.<\/p>\n

This is a first-person narrative, and Belsky does a good job portraying Carlson\u2019s mixed feelings about reinserting herself into this story. She thinks she knows it all, but he has surprises in store for her, and you may think you know everything she knows, but she can surprise as well. Plus, Carlson can be hilarious. She expertly plays the two female eye-candy news readers off each other, leaving political correctness in the dust.<\/p>\n

Carlson does interview Anne and soon launches into full investigatory mode, rummaging around in people\u2019s fifteen-year-old memories. These include the activities of a sketchy motorcycle gang and, specifically, the past of ex-biker and rising political star Elliott Grayson. Some of the dirt she encounters may not leave Carlson with clean hands either. The tension between Carlson and Grayson and the unexpected directions the investigation takes make for an engrossing, fun read\u2014with a visit to Manhattan as a bonus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By RG Belsky \u2013 Dick Belsky\u2019s long association with New York City news media\u2014newspapers, magazines, and television\u2014stand him in good stead in his Manhattan-based crime novels. He makes the newsroom politics entertaining, and the city\u2019s bustle and bravado leap off … 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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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":"****Yesterday's News - She won a Pulitzer Prize for a story whose main secret she never discovered. Crime thriller from newsman Dick Belsky.","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}},"categories":[1335,52,40,261,126],"tags":[412,91,418],"class_list":["post-7332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-fiction","category-journalism","category-reading-2","tag-mystery","tag-new-york","tag-television"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Ug","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332","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=7332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7333,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions\/7333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}