The Last Scoop

March 1, 2020
The murder of her first boss and mentor leads Channel 10 News director Clare Carlson (Below the Fold, 2019, etc.) to a serial killer of the worst kind: the one whose victims have never been connected to each other. Newspaper editor Martin Barlow may have retired, but he still can't resist a great story. And this one, he tells Clare, is "the biggest story of my life," one that starts with New York District Attorney Terri Hartwell and leads to "more than one murder. Maybe lots of them." When Marty's beaten to death the next day outside the town house where he lives with his daughter's family, Clare knows she has to follow the hints he's left her about the wraithlike killer he's dubbed The Wanderer. But she can't imagine what Hartwell's rumored political aspirations have to do with the stabbing of high school cheerleader Becky Bluso in Eckersville, Indiana, nearly 30 years ago. Her brief visit to a Chelsea house of rough-sex prostitution reveals nothing more substantive than a warning that there's no story here and she should lay off it. Although she uses her relationship with her married ex-lover, Scott Manning, who's now with the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit, to maneuver herself into the FBI investigation of five murders linked by DNA, her attempt to link backroom political operative Russell Danziger, who's been working with Hartwell, backfires when his own DNA isn't a match. Meanwhile, she frets about getting scooped, getting fired, and getting shut out by Linda Nesbitt, the daughter in Virginia she's never acknowledged as hers. Buffeted by a perfect storm of crimes ranging from political shenanigans to serial homicide, Clare can only hope that "a big story always made everything better." Readers sucked in by the torrid pace may well overlook the ramshackle plotting. Even the final surprise falls flat.

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March 9, 2020
In Belsky’s captivating third Clare Carlson mystery (after 2019’s Below the Fold), Clare, the news director of a New York City TV station, looks into the death of retired journalist Marty Barlow, her friend and mentor when she was a cub reporter. Marty stopped by her office one day recently to tell her he was working on the biggest story of his life. Before they could meet up to discuss it in depth, Marty was killed in an apparent random mugging. Clare, however, believes his death is the result of his research into a possible serial killer, and she soon realizes that this could be the biggest story of her career as well. Clare’s clear-eyed narration (“I am a woman who deals in lies for a living”) propels the story, balancing dynamic action with contemplative passages that reveal her complicated personal and professional life. Belsky’s experience as a journalist provides fascinating insights and a sense of authenticity. Readers will look forward to seeing more of doggedly determined Clare. Agent: Nalini Akolekar, Spencerhill Assoc.

April 1, 2020
Clare Carlson has always had a soft spot for Martin Barlow. Before Clare became TV news director for a high-voltage New York station, Marty was her editor, mentor, and father figure at a mighty metro daily. Now he's retired and maybe gaga, bothering everybody?including Clare?with a far-fetched story involving corruption at the district attorney's office. Maybe that's why his skull gets crushed. Ashamed at having brushed off the old guy, Clare does some snooping. What she discovers links destructive developers (they're everywhere!) with an unsolved, 30-year-old murder in a tiny town far away, and a serial killer who's been operating in the shadows for at least that long. Belsky has held editorial posts at numerous newspapers; he's a reporter to his marrow, and it's forged his style for good and ill. Functional prose is needed in reportage; here it results in an overly flat style. Still, this is a solidly plotted thriller with lots of insider info. (How do you smoke out a secretive corporate entity? Write 'em a check.) And be ready to duck when you discover the real reason the old guy was killed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)