Truth in Fiction?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  We’ve been talking about how to weave reality into fiction—what we want to read about, and think about. How much we want to escape, versus how much we’re interested in real-life-based decisions fictional characters make. Maybe a veteran experienced journalist like Dick Belsky is the perfect person to tackle such a tightrope topic. His new book THE LAST SCOOP  is, okay, ripped from the headlines. But as all of Dick’s fast-paced investigative thrillers, it goes way deeper than that.

See what you think.

 

#MeToo & The Modern Mystery

By R.G. Belsky

         My character TV news director Clare Carlson falls in love in my latest thriller THE LAST SCOOP.

         And the new man in her life is crazy about Clare too.

         So this is one romance that should be smooth sailing, right?

         Not so fast.

         I’ve written about a lot of romance and love affairs in my crime novels before, but this is the first time I’ve dealt with all the changes in our society in recent times when it comes to these relationships. You see, the man in Clare’s life is a media consultant who has been hired by her TV station to improve the ratings. So, as news director, she is technically his boss. Which raises a myriad of issues in this #metoo era.

         Clare has an attorney friend named Janet who explains this all to her at one point in the book:

         “That’s a situation filled with potential downside for you, Clare. You’re his boss. If the relationship breaks up and the station decides to fire him - or even just doesn’t renew his contract - he could say that’s retaliation from you because of a personal relationship. It’s not as common for a woman supervisor to be accused of sexual harassment as a man, but it can happen. You could find yourself in a legal mess. That’s one scenario.”

         “What’s another one?”

         “He comes up with a plan for the station that doesn’t include you. Based on his consultant advice, the station fires you and gets a new news director. You claim it’s because you refused his sexual advances and wouldn’t sleep with him. Under that scenario, you would have a legitimate sexual harassment lawsuit again him.”

         “Uh, Janet, is there any possible scenario here that doesn’t wind up in a lawsuit?”

         “Well, you could live happily ever after but....” 

That isn’t the only office romance I deal with in THE LAST SCOOP. There’s also an affair going on between the station’s two glamorous co-anchors Brett Wolff and Dani Blaine. Which is complicated by the fact that Brett is married to someone else.

          For Clare, this presents another tricky situation. It’s not an unprecedented happening in TV newsrooms, of course:  MSNBC Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had a love affair and wound up getting married in a real life on-screen romantic story not long ago.

         And, no question about it, that kind of sex between two star co-anchors sure provides a lot of sensational publicity which can translate into big ratings.

         But - like with her own office romance - Clare is left struggling to figure out what her role as a supervisor should be in all this.

         “Isn’t that a problem - a situation like that in the office - with all the controversy these days on sexual relationships or affairs in the workplace?” she is asked by someone at the TV station.

         “They say they’re in love.”

         “What exactly are the rules about that for two people working in the same office?”

         “I’m not sure what the rules are anymore.”

         She’s not the only one.

         I have another incident in the book where a longtime cameraman makes a joke about a woman newscaster’s breasts in front of other people in the office. Clare suspends him for two weeks and orders him to attend sensitivity training classes. He doesn’t understand why, complaining that no one had ever gotten upset before when he made those kinds of jokes to women. “Times have changed,” Clare tells him. “You need to change, too.”

         Now I’m not one of those authors who normally deals with real life political or controversial issues like this in a mystery novel. I don’t have people wearing MAGA hats or dealing with impeachment or universal health care in my books. And I certainly don’t plan to ever write about something as serious as the coronavirus pandemic.

         But - in an era where major media figures like Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and Bill O’Reilly have lost their jobs because of sex scandals in their newsrooms- I find it difficult to write about a woman character like TV news director Clare Carlson without dealing with this important (albeit at times confusing) issue.

         What do you think?

         Would you prefer to keep all this out of a mystery novel and just focus on an old-fashioned romance for a woman character?

         Or do you like the idea of a woman like Clare Carlson dealing with real life issues such as sex in the workplace at the same time as she’s solving the crime?

         Tell me your opinion...

HANK:  Did any of you watch THE MORNING SHOW on  Apple TV? I thought it was terrific--a semi-fictionalization (with embellishments and accessories) of the Matt Lauer story--from the point of view of the Lauer character's coworkers.  Truly thought-provoking. But as Dick asks--what's your opinion?

THE LAST SCOOP

The scariest kind of serial killer—one you don't know exists

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  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? Clare Carlson is perfect for fans of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski.

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

His newest mystery, THE LAST SCOOP, will be published in May 2020 by Oceanview. It is the third 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.  The second Clare Carlson book, BELOW THE FOLD, was in 2019.

He also is the author of two thrillers written under the pen name of Dana Perry - THE SILENT VICTIM 2019) and THE GOLDEN GIRL (June, 2020).

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.