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Summary
Summary
Beloved TV personality, trusted weathercaster, and all-around Renaissance man Al Roker continues his newest successful career with the thrilling sequel to his dynamite mystery debut, The Morning Show Murders . Professional chef turned amateur sleuth Billy Blessing once again finds himself in hot water, when a brutal killing cancels a TV show--and its host--during its debut.
Billy has never liked going to the West Coast, but when he runs into high-energy comic Desmond O'Day, he reluctantly agrees to play second banana on the funnyman's new late-night talk show. Los Angeles holds bad--and bloody--memories for Billy. Twenty years ago, he had suspected obnoxious chef Roger Charbonnet of murdering his ex-starlet girlfriend there, and told the cops. A tricked-up alibi freed Roger, who vowed vengeance. And now Billy might be on the verge of getting burned.
After a horrifying explosion during a TV taping kills more than Desmond O'Day's chance at high ratings, Billy believes that he was the intended target--and that Roger Charbonnet was somehow involved. And when politics, infidelity, and high finance are sprinkled in, the case turns out to have more ingredients than Billy could ever have imagined. Soon a beautiful female TV producer convinces Billy to find the culprit himself--on camera. And the table's set for a conspiracy with too many cooks and far too many killers.
Filled with the high-style hilarity, insider info, and surefire suspense that are Al Roker's series trademark, The Midnight Show Murders is a four-star feast for any fan of top-flight mystery fiction. As James Patterson says, "Maybe Al Roker should quit his day job!"
Author Notes
Al Roker, 1954 Al Roker was raised in Queens, New York, and received his B.A. in Communications from the State University at Oswego in 1976. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the school in 1998. Roker began his broadcasting career while still in college when he got a job as a weekend weatherman for WTVH-TV in Syracuse, N.Y. in 1974. After graduating from college, he moved on to weathercasting jobs in Washington, D.C. from 1976 until 1978 and in Cleveland, Ohio from 1978 til 1983. He transferred to WNBC-TV as a weekend weathercaster in December 1983 from WKYC-TV, the NBC Television Station in Cleveland.
Roker soon became a features reporter as well as a weatherman for NBC. He interviewed many people on a variety of subjects, but the highlight of his interviewing career was when he conducted an exclusive interview with Peanuts creator Charles Shultz shortly before his death from colon cancer. Since 1985, he has served each holiday season as co-host for the annual Christmas at Rockefeller Center. He also co-hosts The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and Rose Bowl Parade and appears on various specials for NBC.
In 1994, he founded Al Roker Productions, Inc. which is involved in the development and production of network, cable, home video and public television projects. Two of the most successful projects of his production company include the critically acclaimed PBS special about severe weather, Savage Skies, as well as a highly rated travel series called Going Places. His company is also producing a series of specials for The Food Network. Roker is the author of "Don't Make Me Stop This Car! Adventures in Fatherhood," which was released in June 2000. Al is the co-author of Never Goin' Back: Winning the Weight-Loss Battle for Good.
New York Magazine has twice named Roker Best Weatherman. He is a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's prestigious Seal of Approval and has been a pioneer in the use of computer graphics for weathercasting. He is also a seven time Emmy Award winner and a member of several professional organizations including the Friars Club, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Meteorological Society.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
TV weatherman Roker and crime veteran Lochte's fast-paced, exciting sequel to The Morning Show Murders takes Roker's alter ego, Billy Blessing, a TV personality on a Today-like show in Manhattan, to Los Angeles. Billy's network bosses have tapped him to be the first weekly guest announcer of a new show, O'Day at Night, hosted by Irish comedian Des O'Day. When a bomb explosion blows an important cast member to bits on the set of O'Day at Night, Billy once again turns sleuth. The case awakens unpleasant memories of the beginning of Billy's career as a cook in L.A. when he unsuccessfully tried to undermine the alibi of Roger Charbonnet, an arrogant but well-connected young chef suspected of killing Tiffany Arden, a failed starlet turned restaurant bookkeeper. A cop who remembers the Arden murder thinks Roger may have been responsible for the bombing. Wry humor lifts this above most celebrity-written fiction. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A TV chef shifts both time slot and venue when his network sends him for a late-night stint in Hollywood.Billy Blessing likes New York. He likes being near Blessing's Bistro, even when sharp-tongue hostess Cassandra Shaw puts him in his place. He likes his morning gig on Worldwide Broadcasting Network's Wake Up America! Los Angeles, on the other hand, holds only sad memories of his short-lived apprenticeship under Chef Ambrose Provoste, which was stopped dead by Provoste's boss Victor Anisette after Billy challenged the alibi Anisette provided for his buddy Roger Charbonnet, accused of killing girlfriend Tiffany Arden. But Gretchen Di Voss, Billy's current boss, wants Billy out on the West Coast as guest announcer for the debut of WBN's late-night entry O'Day At Night, featuring Irish comic-of-the-moment Desmond O'Day. Camping out in the guest house of the funnyman's rented villa gives Billy a ringside seat for all sorts of bad behavior from O'Day and his musical sidekick Jimmy Fitzpatrick. And it gives Billy access to novelist-screenwriter Harry Paynter, the spoiled brat co-writing Blessing's biography. But it also reconnects him with cowboy star Stew Gentry, one of the bright spots in his earlier L.A. sojourn. And Billy will need a friend when Des gets blown to bits onstage and the police suspect that the real target may have been his announcer.Although Billy may be too good to be true, Roker and Lochte offer a satisfying entre to follow the appetizer they provided in The Morning Show Murders (2009).]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One My love affair with Los Angeles began to wane twenty-three years ago, the morning a cleaning crew found Tiffany Arden's body in a dumpster behind Chez Anisette, a very popular restaurant of the day. Her head had been pulverized. If you're ghoulish enough to want a more detailed description than that, then go ahead and Google the media coverage of the murder. There was a lot of it. Much of it was accurate. Some was not. For example, it was widely reported that her murderer was unknown. Not true. I was pretty sure I knew who he was. And I knew that he was still at large, enjoying a rich, full life in the City of Angels. "Just listen ta this, Billy." The gruff but lilting voice of Irish pop singer-guitarist Jimmy Fitzpatrick interrupted my morose thoughts with a statistic almost as disturbing. "There are two thousand, nine hundred an' forty-three things that can cock-up the average airplane, any one of 'em capable of plummetin' us to earth an' certain death. Would ya believe it?" Fitz, my seatmate aboard American Airlines flight 349 to Los Angeles, was reading a cheery little nonbook he'd picked up at JFK, What Could Go Wrong? "Thanks for sharing," I said, and picked up my airport purchase, a Walter Mosley paperback, from my lap, where I'd rested it while musing about poor Tiffany. "O' course, this is not the average airplane, since we're travelin' in the comp'ny of the future king o' late-night tele," Fitz added, making sure he was heard by the king, who was sitting across the aisle. Off camera and semi-relaxed, the comedian Desmond O'Day was a wiry bantamweight in his forties with a V-shaped face and short, neatly coifed hair so blond it was almost silver. He had a penchant for tight, black apparel, which presently included linen trousers and a T-shirt designed to display his workout arm muscles and mini-six-pack. He paused in his perusal of a script to glare over his rimless half-glasses at his shaggy-haired, bearded music director. "Stop botherin' Billy, ya sod," he said. "The man's doin' us a big favor, travelin' all across the country to help us kick off the show." Fitz, wincing from having incurred the displeasure of his old pal and new boss, said, "Sorry, Billy." He gave me an apologetic smile and leaned back in his seat, silent as the late King Tut. "A little conversation would be fine, Fitz," I said, "as long as it's about something other than us plummeting to the ground in a screaming death plunge, then being vaporized in a fireball of death." He kept his lips zipped, evidently convinced that a command from Des O'Day was not to be taken lightly. He was a better judge of that than I. He'd known Des since they were boys together on the Emerald Isle, while I'd just met the man. Oh, I'm Billy Blessing, by the way. Chef Billy Blessing, to be formal about it. For a decade and a half, I served in other chefs' kitchens before opening my own place, Blessing's Bistro, in Manhattan. It's famous for its steaks and chops, and the food we prepare and serve has earned a top rating in Gault Milleau, of which I am quite proud. My fame, such as it is, comes only indirectly from my culinary skills. I'm a cohost on the Worldwide Broadcasting Company's morning news and entertainment show Wake Up, America! weekdays seven to nine a.m. If you're one of the show's four million viewers, you've probably seen me, the guy who, I've been told, looks a little like a slightly stockier, clean-shaven (head as well as face) version of Eddie Murphy. I provide a daily WUA! segment on food preparation, but I have other chores, too. I do remotes, interview visitors to NYC who line up on the street each morning outside the studio, review books, chat with authors who are flogging their wares, and, whenever possible, flog my own wares, which, in addition to the Bistro, include a weekly cooking show on the Wine & Dine Cable Network, Blessing's in the Kitchen, a line of premium frozen dinners, and a couple of cookbooks. At that particular moment I was flying from New York to Los Angeles to add two new credits to my list. One of them involved the Irishman across the aisle. Though you couldn't have told it by his sour scowl, Des was very funny and quick-witted, and he'd parlayed success on the stand-up circuit and a featured role as the cynical, sex-obsessed photographer in the popular sitcom A Model Life into an upper-strata gig as host of his own show, O'Day at Night, WBC's entry in the post-prime-time talk-show sweepstakes, set to debut in precisely nine days. I'd been tapped as the new show's first weekly guest announcer. Its producer, a Falstaffian wheeler-dealer named Max Slaughter, told me I'd been Des's first choice. My agent-lawyer, Wally Wing, who, unlike most members of both of his professions, has never heard the term "candy-coating," admitted that Des had wanted someone on the order of Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt or, at the very least, the ex-governator of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gretchen Di Voss, the head of the network, somehow avoided laughing in his face and offered him Howie Mandell or me. Howie had other commitments. "Why wouldn't I have other commitments?" I'd asked Wally. "Well, one reason--Gretchen wants you to do it. She feels it would be, in her words, 'an act of synchronicity.' You'd be the bridge between Wake Up and At Night, getting viewers of the morning show to sample the late show while at the same time giving At Night's fans a taste of the morning show." "I'd love to meet these viewers who are up from seven in the morning till after midnight," I'd replied. "But, okay, that explains why the network wants me to do the show. Why in God's name would I agree to spend two weeks in L.A., away from home, hearth, and restaurant?" Wally had grinned and said, "The real reason's got nothing to do with the O'Day show. It's . . . wait for it . . . Sandy Selman wants to make a movie about you and the Felix thing." The Felix thing. A typically Wally way of summing up one of the more unpleasant events of my life. A little more than a year ago, an executive at the network was murdered, and for a number of reasons, real or imagined, I was put at the top of the cops' suspect list. Then an international assassin known as Felix the Cat got involved and all hell broke loose. I was threatened, nearly roasted alive, and shot at. And I lost a woman I cared for. The Felix thing. "Okay," I said, "a guy I've never heard of wants to make a movie about a devastating experience I've spent the last year trying to forget. Tell me why I have to go to L.A. " "You've never heard of Sandy Selman?" was Wally's response. "Okay, I've heard of him. He makes movies that are ninety percent computer graphics, eight percent sex, and two percent end credits. So why do I have to go to L.A. " "To write the book," Wally said in the singsong manner Big Bird uses to speak to kids. "What book?" "The book you're going to be writing in L.A." "What makes you think I can write a book?" "How hard can it be? Paris Hilton has written a book. Miley Cyrus has written a book. Hell, the goofy weatherman on the Today show's written five books. You may be the only person in show business who hasn't written a book." "Well, I did the cookbooks," I said. "My point exactly," Wally said. "Why do I have to go to L.A. to write it? Last I checked, it was possible to write one in Manhattan." "Not if we want Sandy Selman to produce the film version. He likes to be able to look over his writers' shoulders as they work. And don't worry about that. It's Harry Paynter's shoulders he'll be looking over." "Ahhhhhh. Suddenly, it all becomes clear," I said. "I'm guessing Harry is one of your literary clients, and he's going to be helping me write the book." "On the nose," Wally said, tapping his almost nonexistent schnoz in an impressive display of his expertise at charades. "He'll also be writing the screenplay." "How altruistic of you, Wally! Oh, wait . . . in addition to your agent fees for both of us, you'll probably be getting a packager percent, too, right?" "What's with the 'tude, bro? I assure you, this little jaunt is gonna be worth your while." "It's not the money," I said. "I trust you to handle that. It's going to L.A." "Spending two or three weeks on the coast is gonna kill you, Billy?" Little did he know. Excerpted from The Midnight Show Murders by Al Roker, Dick Lochte All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.