By Hank Phillippi Ryan
MIRA, 2009
My Rating: A
I’m feeling pretty smug right now but I’ll try not to strut in an obnoxious way. Why am I smug? Because, for once, I have a great book that is number one in the series. Not only the first book – I have all four books! Okay, that was too much strutting, wasn’t it. I plan to tell you about all four of the books over the next month or so. Let me begin by telling you about the first book – Prime Time.
Charlotte (Charlie) McNally is an award-winning investigative journalist for Channel 3 in Boston. She has won numerous Emmys which tells me she’s very good at her job. But Charlie worries because she’s getting old – I guess 46 is over the hill in TV news – and she’s also worried about finding her next big story. Evidently, you are only as good as your next story.
Charlie has a loyal friend and business partner in Franklin, her producer. Franklin is smart, resourceful, and as courageous as Charlie. The other trait they have in common is a built-in hunch factor, what people used to call a nose for news. They “smell” something when a local man, who had been sending spam emails to Charlie, dies in a car accident that his widow believes was not an accident.
Charlie’s hunt for a good story turns into a great mystery involving corporate fraud, murder, a little romance and a lot of danger. The story has numerous twists and turns and had me guessing till the very end. The plot was so clever.
Since the story was told in the first person, it felt as if I was one-on-one with a real-live journalist as she looked at all the minute details of the case and figured it all out. That feeling was enhance because I knew the author, Hank Phillippi Ryan, is, in fact, a TV investigative journalist. Just like Charlie, she has won Emmys for her TV work but I’m also happy to tell you she has won awards for her books.
As soon as I finished Prime Time I picked up the second book, Face Time. A word to the wise: get them all. You won’t be able to read just one.
For a copy of Prime Time check your local public library. This book is also available at Amazon
Source: Nancy Berland, Public Relations
I am an Amazon Associate.
I’m so glad you like it so much and I love your advice to get all of them at once. I’m definitely checking this one out!
This sounds like a real page turner! I love books that keep me engrossed like that.
Sounds like a good series for a former journalist like me.
Huh – I had no idea Hank was a writer! We don’t watch her news station typically (she is on NBC Channel 7 – we watch CBS) but are of course familiar with her name and efforts in investigative journalism as Boston locals. Wait till I tell Andy. I wonder if he’d be able to take the books seriously of if he’d always just see Hank in between the pages!
sounds like a winning series for sure. I’m positive that before you’re done I will have to read these!!
Well, you should be smug!! I have this one on my wish list, as you may have guessed since it’s the first of a series
Congratulations on accomplishing something I’ve never been able to do; starting a mystery series from the get-go! I will look for the first one of this series and see if I can do it.
I would love to start this series too.