One of the most common pieces of advice for authors is to write what you know.
R.G. Belsky knows journalism.
A former managing editor for NBCNews.com and the New York Daily News, Belsky has used that career of skill sets to create a thoroughly authentic investigative reporter in Gil Malloy. In his second adventure, Shooting for the Stars (Atria, 2015), the tenacious and oft-times cynical Malloy is convinced the murder of a local television personality is intrinsically linked to the thirty-year-old unsolved murder of Hollywood movie diva Laura Marlowe.
Malloy is perhaps more akin to Mike Hammer, James Rockford, or Jake Gittes with a nose for news and a knack for getting in trouble. You just don’t see many reporters of his ilk anymore.
His tenacity soon rankles his editor, an assortment of suspects, and even a local mob boss. With each new interview, Malloy uncovers a new name or a long buried secret leading to a whole new line of questioning and ample plot twists. More than enough to keep readers rapidly flipping pages.
While the thickly layered mystery is riveting in itself, Belsky heaps on a healthy dose of sharp-tongued dialogue and shrewd wit. But at the same time, he reveals a more vulnerable side to Malloy, who suffers from occasional anxiety attacks and a troubled love life.
Shooting for the Stars is the followup to The Kennedy Connection, but readers don’t have to read the first book to enjoy this outing. Malloy’s next mystery, Blonde Ice, is already drawing rave reviews across the internet.
A winner of the 2016 Claymore Award presented by the Killer Nashville writer’s conference, Belsky is an author to watch.
Unlike his previous efforts – 
If there’s anyone out there still lamenting the absence of Elmore Leonard’s “Justified” on TV, you can get your fix of small-town Kentucky criminals in Jesse Donaldson’s debut thriller, The More They Disappear.
Homicide Detective Mike Warren embraces the easy way out by wanting to peg the crime on the victim’s wife, Miriam Hartwell, whom Carrick saw driving away from the scene. Fortunately for readers, the truth is a lot more complicated, as is often the case with Carrick’s adventures.
When the picture card inside the nanny cam goes missing, Maya has no evidence to back up what she saw, and anyone she tells is more than reluctant to believe her. But Maya, a former Army captain with plenty of command experience, isn’t one to just let things go.
Clinical psychologist Joseph O’Laughlin is reluctant to once again take on the role of detective—after seven previous adventures, he thought he’d given it up to live out a peaceful retirement—but when a former student, Milo Coleman, calling himself “the Mindhunter,” begins to jeopardize the police investigation, he can no longer stand by idly. With his reputation in danger, Joe sets out to smooth over the ruffled feathers of the police and to calm a groundswell of public anger over the brutal unsolved murders of a mother and her teenage daughter.
Laukkenen’s recurring FBI agents Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere pursue an Internet troll who encourages fragile teenagers to commit suicide, while recording their final moments via webcam for a black market on the dark web. The case takes on a deeper meaning for Windermere, who continues to berate herself over a past mistake in which she stood by as a fellow classmate was bullied in school to the point she one day never came back. Catching the predator in this case serves as a chance, however slight, for redemption.
Leslie has created an anti-hero to root for in the vein of Walt White from Breaking Bad: a tormented, down-on-herself woman who would much rather seek solace from the fumes of her crack pipe than deal with people face-to-face, or with life in general. But when her sister’s own twin sons are kidnapped as well, Cleary abandons the relatively safe confines of her half-life to embark on a trippy, vigilante-styled quest for vengeance that takes her from the streets of LA to Toronto to a family cabin in the Maine wilderness.
Originally published in the Netherlands in 2009, Hogarth – an imprint of Crown Publishing – has served up a new Extra Libris printing of the New York Times bestseller for connoisseurs of fine reading, with a reader’s guide as well as a behind-the-scenes essay and conversation with Koch. And it’s worth every juicy morsel.
Story By G. ROBERT FRAZIER 