Wendy Kyle owns Heartbreaker Investigations, a P.I. agency that specializes in cheating spouses, and someone just blew her car up with her in it. The list of potential suspects is as long as her client list, and that doesn't even include the New York Police Department, which is where she worked previously and got into lots of trouble, ending with her suspension and the dissolution of her career in the force. She made plenty of enemies while she was with the NYPD, including those she accused of sexual harassment and/or corruption. She even physically attacked her commanding officer, Warren Magnuson, at one point, which only alienated her further from the force. She was like a dog with a bone, especially regarding one specific case that was ruled as suicide, but she was certain it was homicide. Sadly for Wendy, she was the only one who felt that way. And now she's been murdered.
Clare is sorry the woman is dead, but it's the perfect story for her. Now she just needs to figure out what happened, so she taps into her sources, including her ex-husband, Homicide Sgt. Sam Markham, and her ex-lover, FBI agent Scott Manning. She finds out that police discovered a page from Wendy Kyle's diary that stated she was worried for her safety and implicated local billionaire Ronald Bannister, should anything happen to her. Now that's news!
As Clare starts to investigate, starting with trailing Bannister, she not only discovers that he is a flagrant womanizer, but she also has a run-in with a beefy guy who appears to be hotel security, but then she catches him following her later. She continues to dig for info on Kyle by looking into Magnuson, her former commander who is now Chief of Department, and also Jaime Ortiz, former Police Commissioner, and now the gubernatorial frontrunner. Seems like Wendy Kyle was connected to a lot of powerful people, which means Clare's investigation just got a lot more dangerous.
When several more bodies drop who happen to be people Clare was talking to while digging into Wendy Kyle, she starts to wonder if she isn't next on the killer's hit list. The way Clare has been dropping info bombs on her news reports definitely has a lot of people stirred up, the least of whom are her superiors. It'll be a race to see which comes first - Clare getting fired, turning 50, or being murdered!
Broadcast Blues is an engaging mystery with several twists and turns, but personally, I didn't really relate to the character of Clare Carlson. I suppose it's hard to come into an established series though, so I may have felt different had I read her story from the beginning. While Belsky does a good job of filling in her backstory, I will admit most of her co-workers just felt like background noise to me. However, if you enjoy a good mystery surrounding a dogged news reporter, you'll probably enjoy Clare Carlson and Broadcast Blues.
