The Talk Show Murders

October 17, 2011
Roker and Lochte delve into the hitherto unknown dark side of their engaging lead, chef and TV personality Billy Blessing, in their third whodunit (after 2010’s The Midnight Show Murders). While Blessing’s Today-like morning show, Wake Up, America!, is telecasting for two weeks in Chicago, Pat Patton, an ex-cop turned right-wing blogger, corners Blessing. Besides knowing Blessing’s real last name, Patton knows of the chef’s arrest for fraud 25 years earlier and, possibly, the truth behind the murder of Blessing’s partner-in-crime. While Blessing’s still adjusting to the implications of Patton’s blackmail threats, someone connected to Wake Up, America! is murdered. The authors take things lightly (“Every mystery novel I’ve ever read,” Blessing says at one point, “if somebody dies in a fire, they always turn up in the last chapter alive with a gun in their hand”), but offer enough clues and twists to gratify fair-play fans.

December 15, 2011
A celebrity chef lands in someone's crosshairs after an appearance on a daytime talk show. Billy Blessing (The Midnight Show Murders, 2010, etc.), star of Wake Up, America!'s cooking spot, hasn't entirely made a secret of his former life as William Blanchard, who went to jail for helping his foster father, con man Paul Lamont. But he doesn't exactly flaunt it either. So when he guest stars on Midday with Gemma along with former Chicago cop Pat Patton, the last thing he wants is for Patton to show up in his hotel room threatening to expose his past. Paul is long deceased, killed on orders from mobster Gio Polvere. Polvere is dead too, killed in a fire. When Patton buys it as well, Billy goes on alert, but what puts him over the top is the death of Larry Kelsto, a comic who was supposed to appear on Gemma with him and Patton until he got bumped because starlet Carrie Sands went on too long about her latest project, an American remake of Gerard Parnelle's The Thief Who Stole the Eiffel Tower. Now strangers in a van are taking pot shots at Billy and Carrie. Mantata, an art gallery owner with likely ties to Lamont, steps out of the shadows, sending three oddball henchmen to protect him. But can Philippine fashion plate Hiho, jiving Jamaican Trejean and good-old-boy-gone-wrong Dal save Chef Billy from a threat whose source is as mysterious as Mantata himself? Despite its over-the-top finale, Roker and Lochte's third is as well-paced and thoughtfully prepared as an Alice Waters tasting menu.

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