Who's the Victim?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s something Dame Sue Grafton talked about all the time—how the
most neglected character in mystery novels is—the victim.

And the wonderful Dick Belsky, a reporter and editor of infinite renown who has now taken on fiction as a second brilliantly successful career—has been thinking the same thing.


MURDER IS NOT ALWAYS EQUAL--
IN THE MEDIA - OR MYSTERY FICTION
By R.G. Belsky

“Everybody matters, or nobody matters.”

That’s the famous credo of Harry Bosch, Michael Connelly’s wonderful and long-running LAPD homicide detective - and it really is a noble and laudable concept.

Sadly though, it’s not always true.

Not in real life police murder investigations.

Not in the media, where I worked for many years covering murders at the New York Post, New York Daily News and NBC News.

And not even in mystery fiction, where I write a series these days about a TV journalist named Clare Carlson.

My new book BELOW THE FOLD takes a hard look at the issue of how the media covers different murders in different ways. Sure, every human life is important. But the ones we hear about on the news are often decided by a set of rules sometimes cynically referred to as the White Blonde Female Syndrome.

Sex sells. Sex, money and power. That translates into big ratings numbers, which translates into more advertising dollars. Those are the only kinds of murders worth covering, Clare - a TV news director in New York City - explains at the beginning of the book.

But sometimes a journalist’s human instincts take over and he or she ignore those rules to do what they believe is the right thing, the moral thing - instead of just going for the obvious sensationalistic news appeal.

That’s what happens in BELOW THE FOLD (a newspaper term for a story not considered big enough to make the front page headlines) when Clare begins investigating the murder of a homeless woman on the streets of New York City named Dora Gayle. Dora Gayle isn’t sexy, rich or powerful. She’s really just a “nobody” the people in the newsroom tell Clare, who question why she even cares about this seemingly un-newsworthy murder.

But Clare discovers that the homeless woman was once a beautiful, brilliant college student who dreamed of writing poetry and great literature.

She finds a haunting picture of the woman as a 22-year-old where she looks happy and full of life and still dreaming of the wonderful things she had to look forward to in the life ahead of her.

And Clare eventually finds herself identifying with Dora Gayle - not just as a news story, but as a person.

Oh, and Dora Gayle does turn out to be helluva story too.

I think this is a valuable concept for us to follow in writing mystery fiction, as well as in real life media and police coverage of murders.

Not too many mystery novels are about homeless people or people living in rundown housing projects or even ordinary people living ordinary lives which don’t seem that interesting on the face of it.

But - like Dora Gayle - everyone has a story, when you dig down deep enough to find out the facts about them.

And, to paraphrase Connelly, everyone can matter.

I learned this lesson a long time ago when I was a young journalist at the New York Post, where we had a veteran police reporter who would check out EVERY murder that moved on the police wire, no matter how unimportant it appeared.

I use a fictional version of this in my book, but I can still remember actually sitting there next to him while he would call up the cops and ask questions like: “Tell me about the body of that kid you found in the Harlem pool room - was he a MENSA candidate or what?” Or, “The woman you found dead in the alley behind the housing project - any chance she might be Julia Roberts or a member of the British Royal Family?”

I once asked him why he even bothered since these murders were never going to be anything worth covering in the newspaper.

“Hey, you never know,” he said.

In my book, I follow that advice as I have Clare Carlson check out the homeless woman’s murder, which turns out to be linked to long-buried secrets involving rich and powerful figures - and it surprisingly explodes into a sensational headline story for Clare and the TV station.

Of course, not every murder can be covered equally in the media.

Or in mystery fiction either.

But do we sometimes focus too much on the sensational, high-profile crimes - and ignore the lost lives around us that might be just as important?

It’s a question that every reporter has to struggle with in the fast-faced media world we live in today.

What do you think?

HANK: It’s so fascinating—which victims get press attention versus the ones who don’t. Do you notice that? What do you think about that? What do you think about why?
And do you realize--it may be that "below the fold" becomes a baffling anachronism? Do you still read the paper paper? I sure do!


R. G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery , BELOW THE FOLD, is being published in May 2019 by Oceanview.
It is the second 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.
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. At the Daily News, he also held the titles of metropolitan editor and deputy national editor. Before that, he was metropolitan editor of the New York Post and news editor at Star magazine.
Belsky was most recently the managing editor for news at NBCNews.com. His previous suspense novels include PLAYING DEAD and LOVERBOY. Belsky has been nominated as a finalist for the David Award at Deadly Ink and also for the Silver Falchion at Killer Nashville, He also was a Claymore Award winner at Killer Nashville.

Getting into the Game: a guest blog by Sara J. Henry

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  It won't come as a surprise to anyone who reads my writing to find out I;m always on the look-out for a good book set in the Adirondacks. Which is how I stumbled across Sara J. Henry. I had read some excellent reviews of her debut novel, Learning to Swim, and upon realizing it took place in the Adirondacks, I snatched it up. 

Reader, I loved it. I wasn't the only one, either; Learning to Swim was nominated for the Barry and Macavity awards and won the Anthony, Agatha and Mary Higgins Clark awards. Hoping to ride on her coattails, I asked if I could blurb the sequel, A Cold and Lonely Place. (When it, too, picks up a bunch of award nominations, I figure Sara will be good to stand me a few drinks.)

Sara's here today to answer the one question I didn't get a chance to ask her when we met at Bouchercon: how does a nice girl from Tennessee wind up writing about the North Country?

It took exactly twelve weeks to decide I wanted to make a living writing – the twelve weeks I spent working as a soil scientist in Gainesville, Florida. I was twenty, with a boss who told me every Friday, “Only thirty-five years to retirement.” Maybe that was his way of hinting that this was not the career for me (kids, the career that seems fun in college may not be anything close to fun when you’re doing it forty hours a week, in a hot Florida town where the clay layer doesn’t kick in until eighty inches, which is how deep you have to dig to map soils.)

Time for a new plan.

I got a column in the local paper, and started journalism graduate school. After a series of part-time newspaper jobs, I turned to the ads in the back of Editor & Publisher. One week I applied for jobs as farm editor, religion editor, and sports editor – all of which I was equally unqualified for.

One editor responded, from a tiny newspaper in a tiny town in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. I arrived for my interview in what seemed the dead of winter, stepping off the small plane at a tiny airport into a world that was white as far as the eye could see. It was cold in a way I’d never experienced.

They offered me the job as sports editor.

I took it.

Never mind that this was an area where sports were big – with three high schools, two community colleges, softball teams, three-day sled dog races, canoe races, Winter Carnival competitions, rugby tournaments. With the Olympic Center nearby, there was luge, bobsled, biathlon, ski jumping, horse show competition, boxing, triathlon. And more.

It was my job to cover them all.

Never mind that my sports experience was limited to competing in bicycle and running races, and writing a string of sports features. I’d been to exactly one college football game.

I worked the way you can work only when you’re in your twenties and have already flubbed one career and don’t want to flub another. I bought a book that detailed the rules of various sports. I went from event to event, shooting hockey from the penalty box, basketball from under the hoop, football from the sidelines. With this many sports to cover, understanding the nuances of game play was neither possible nor necessary. I took a lot of photos, got quotes from coaches, and spelled names right. I worked nearly around the clock, coming in at 3 am on Monday morning to write features and develop film and lay out my pages. Nearing deadline, the press room guys would stare at me through the window in the door while I hustled through my last page.

.

Winters were brutal. Bit by bit I assembled an essential wardrobe – wool-lined Sorel boots, long johns, insulated gloves, head warmer, wool hat, thick coat. I learned to carry cardboard to stand on at outside events for insulation. I kept a sleeping bag in the car in case I got stranded. I put a lot of miles on my car and shot a lot of film. I discovered coffee. I ate on the run. I was thinner than I’d ever been.

I loved it.

Toward the end of my second year someone sent one of my bobsled articles to a magazine that reprinted it and sent me a check that was more than I earned in a week. Light dawned. I couldn’t keep up this pace and didn’t want to cut corners, so not too much later I resigned to write freelance write. Then after a few years, I went off to other places, to work at magazines, at other papers, as a book editor.

But I never forgot this place I loved, and the people who made me feel I belonged for the first time in my life.

So when I sat down to write a novel, years later, this was where it had to be set.
 

Location, location, location. It's as important for a novel as it is for real estate. What are your stand-out settings in fiction, dear Readers? What sort of settings do you love to read about? And has a new place ever made itself home in your own life? One lucky commenter will win a copy of A Cold and Lonely Place!

Sara’s first novel, Learning to Swim, won the Anthony and Agatha awards for best first novel and the Mary Higgins Clark award. Its sequel is A Cold and Lonely Place (Crown, Feb. 5, 2013), which Howard Frank Mosher describes as “a character-driven thriller set in one of the coldest and loneliest places in the United States: the Adirondack Mountains in mid-winter.” (Publishers Weekly refers to “Henry's bone-deep sense of this terribly beautiful place,” and Booklist says the book “perfectly conjures the lure of living in a small and beautiful mountain town during a bitterly cold winter.” Which makes the author very happy.)

You can read excerpts of Sara's books at her website, friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter as @SaraJHenry. She blogs at Sara in Vermont.

Writing the F Word

" ...fiction readers will love this riveting, action-packing journey into television news investigations."
--(starred review) Library Journal on Silencing Sam


Julie Kramer and I were separated at birth. No, that's wrong. Because we're not separate. We both inhabit the deadline-crazed, ratings-driven, high-stakes, high-stress world of journalism. And our books take place in a fictional-but-realistic world of TV news.

In a real newsroom? You'll hear words that would make your Gramma's head spin. If you have a certain kind of Gramma.

But you'll never hear my fictional Charlotte McNally utter a word she wouldn't say on the air. She says there are too many pitfalls on live TV. And if your brain is used to swearing, in an emergency, your mouth will say words that would make the FCC unhappy. So she just--doesn't say them.

But Julie has been thinking about language. And her third and newest book--which Booklist called "a worthy entry in a winning series," has something completely different.

The F-Word

My latest thriller, SILENCING SAM, contains something my previous books did not: the f-bomb.

I try not to use the word in everyday life, and had taken some pride not to have used it in my two previous books, STALKING SUSAN and MISSING MARK. Some authors routinely use it as a verb, noun or adjective. They've explained that it makes for more realistic dialogue, or serves as a means of creating credible characters - proof of how bad the bad guy is, or how far the hero has been pushed.

But in my latest novel, my excuse is that I used it for a specific reason. I'm a career television news producer and write a series set in the desperate world of TV news. Part of my trademark as an author is I write media thrillers that take readers inside how newsrooms make decisions and am candid about some of the flaws of the profession. Yes, much to my former colleagues dismay, I told readers If It Bleeds, It Leads.

My use of the f-word came about because I wanted to illustrate what happens in the news control booth if that word -or a similar cuss cousin - comes up during a live broadcast. And what some of the ramifications can be from the Federal Communications Commission. While most live radio programs have a seven second delay, local television news does not.

As I wrote the scene...I decided not using the real word would be a cop out, and cheat the moment of its drama. So I convinced myself that the word was just a word. And if it was good enough for vice presidents Joe Biden and Dick Cheney...it was good enough for me. Although I was careful not to let my protagonist be the one who uttered it. But who could blame her if she had? After all, she's been arrested for the murder of a gossip columnist.

But deep down in my journalism heart, I knew the word was more than just a word, or the FCC wouldn't get so excited. Or I wouldn't have the angst I did. Like what would my mom think? What would my kids think? And would I still be eligible for the Mary Higgins Clark Award?

Ultimately I decided a realistic look at the news was worth stepping over this line. Then I waited to see if my agent or editor questioned it. Neither did. I'd like to think they agreed with my bold editorial decision. But maybe they didn't even notice.

How about the rest of you authors - is it harder to actually type the f-word than letting it slip in general conversation? Plenty of bestsellers never use the word at all. Others use it liberally. As for you readers - what's your take? Do you cringe when you read swear words or do they just become invisible?

***********************

Julie Kramer is a freelance news producer for NBC's Today show, Nightly News, and Dateline. Prior to that she was a national award-winning investigative producer for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.

Julie grew up along the Minnesota-Iowa state line, fourth generation of a family who raised cattle and farmed corn for 130 years. Her favorite childhood days were spent waiting for the bookmobile to bring her another Phyllis A. Whitney novel. An avid reader, she tired of fictional TV reporters always being portrayed as obnoxious secondary characters who could be killed off whenever the plot started dragging. So her debut thriller, STALKING SUSAN, features a TV reporter as the heroine and takes readers inside the world of television news. She lives with her husband and sons in White Bear Lake, MN.