The Whole Truth?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: You know, when you get writers together, there are certain things we always talk about. Writing, for one. (No surprise.) Books, and point of view, the industry, funny stories about bookstore signings, and how you can get on the bestseller lists, and on and on.  You’ve heard it. You’ve loved it. You’ve joined in, right? It’s part of our world.

One of the fun things about being a journalist—there’s the same kind of camaraderie and shared experiences.  That’s why it’s dangerous to put me in the same room with the amazing Dick Belsky. He’s a veteran journalist, and has SO many wonderful stories! And he’s taken all those experiences and translated them into riveting and realistic fiction. 

It IS fiction, right?

HONEST, I'M TELLING YOU THE TRUTH – JUST NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH

    By R.G. Belsky

   

         The most important thing a journalist has is their integrity.

            That was the first line of a mystery novel I wrote about being a reporter a few years ago. I believed it then, and I believe it now. I speak about the issue of journalistic integrity with considerable experience, having worked in the media for many years at NBC News, the New York Daily News and the New York Post. A real-life journalist can break a lot of rules chasing after a big story, but there is one rule he or she can never violate. A real-life journalist always has to tell the reader the truth.

    

      Not so much for a fictional journalist.

    

  Clare Carlson, the TV newswoman in my new mystery YESTERDAY'S NEWS, is what has become known in writing circles these days as the "unreliable narrator."

     The "unreliable narrator" phrase became popular most recently, of course, from two blockbuster mystery novels - Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins – where the characters telling the story turn out not to be what they seemed when we first met them.

     But the concept has been around for a long time. The ultimate unreliable narrator book goes all the way back to 1926 when Agatha Christie wrote The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. (No spoiler alert really needed here to tell you that the narrator is shockingly revealed as the killer at the end. Hey, if you haven't read this book since 1926, you're probably never going to read it!)

   Now I didn't start out to write my own narrator this way. The Clare Carlson character is the news director of a New York City TV station who actually cares passionately about truth and integrity and trustworthiness when it comes to journalism. She teaches these rules to all the reporters who work for her, and she follows them herself in covering any news story. Her integrity is at the core of the story in YESTERDAY'S NEWS.

      But, in using Clare's voice to tell that story, I soon realized that the phrase "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" didn't always apply here.

Look, everyone lies. There are all sorts of lies. Big lies. Little lies. The lies that people tell casually every day with little thought or remorse: Fibbing about sticking to a diet, calling in sick for work to go to a ballgame or fudging a few numbers on an income tax return. The bigger lies that politicians and real estate brokers and used car salesman tell to get us to buy whatever they’re selling. And then there are the lies so breathtaking in their scope and audaciousness that most of us could never fathom resorting to them no matter how desperate we were. A journalist’s job is to catch people in these lies and expose their lies to the world. Even if it’s the journalist herself who’s not telling the truth.

Which is what happens in YESTERDAY’S NEWS.

The story is about a legendary missing child case in New York City. Fifteen years ago, little 11-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school. Clare Carlson, then a young newspaper reporter, became a media star writing about the story – even winning a Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary coverage. But now, on the 15^th anniversary of Lucy’s disappearance, the story is back in the news with new questions, new leads and new suspects that ultimately force Clare to face long-buried, hard truths about herself.

I think one of the reasons some mystery authors turn to the unreliable narrator approach is because of the difficulties writing a mystery in the first person. A book that has multiple viewpoints or is done in the third person allows the author to more easily conceal key information from the reader. But, in the first person, the reader presumably knows everything that the character does from the very beginning. Which makes it tough to keep the mystery going until the end.

Hence, the narrator like Clare who tells you what she wants you to know and when she wants you to know it – while omitting some of the other crucial information until much later.

Clare herself maybe sums up this approach to learning the truth best when she talks about one of the basic rules she follows when interviewing people as a journalist. “Sometimes the important thing is not to listen to what they tell you,” she instructs a young reporter, “but to listen to what they’re NOT telling you. More often than not, that’s where the real story is.”

By the end of the book though, I think you’ll find Clare – despite her flaws – to be a pretty trustworthy character.

A person of integrity.

An honest journalist.

And that’s the truth!

HANK: Suuuure!  SO—since we try to avoid knock-down-drag-outs around her, instead of talking about reporters, let’s talk about unreliable narrators. Or—your favorite books with unreliable narrators.

I’ve got to say, I remember, clearly, reading Roger Ackroyd, and just…gasping. And I LET YOU GO. Totally got me. And Gone Girl, think what you will, that twist was awesome. How about The Usual Suspects? Sixth Sense? Got to LOVE those, right?

Are you put off when you’re warned there’s a twist? Are you weary of unreliable narrators? Let us know!

R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery, YESTERDAY'S NEWS, was published in May 2018 by Oceanview.  It is the first in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station. He previously wrote the Gil Malloy series for Atria about a tabloid newspaper reporter.  Belsky himself has been a top editor at the New York Post (where he helped create the famous “Headless Body in Topless Bar” headline), the New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. Two earlier Belsky thrillers that came out in the ‘90s – LOVERBOY and PLAYING DEAD – were re-released by Harper Collins recently in ebook form for the first time.www.rgbelsky.com