Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Martin Barlow was Clare Carlson’s first newspaper editor, a beloved mentor who inspired her career as a journalist. But, since retiring from his newspaper job, he had become a kind of pathetic figure—railing on about conspiracies, cover-ups, and other imaginary stories he was still working on. Clare had been too busy with her own career to pay much attention to him.

When Martin Barlow is killed on the street one night during an apparent mugging attempt gone bad, it seems like he was just an old man whose time had come. But Clare—initially out of a sense of guilt for ignoring her old friend and then because of her own journalistic instincts—begins looking into his last story idea. As she digs deeper and deeper into his secret files, she uncovers shocking evidence of a serial killer worse than Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, or any of the other infamous names in history. This really is the biggest story of Martin Barlow’s career—and Clare’s, too—as she uncovers the path leading to the decades-long killer of at least twenty young women.

All is not as it seems during Clare’s relentless search for this serial killer. Is she setting herself up to be his next victim?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Terrific first read in a series. It's book three in order, but it is my introduction to Clare and her media-centered world. Since I lived in Manhattan during the 1980s and all the 1990s, I love reading about that uniquely different world.

There are two strands to this story. Clare's early-days mentor, when she was cutting her journalistic teeth in the newspaper business (making this kind of an historical novel, since that was rendered impossible early this century), has declined in mental health of late. She thinks, in common with others, that he's lost part of his mind because he's going on about conspiracies and cover-ups at great length...so Clare's done what she can to avoid him. It's not as cruel as it sounds, her job in the TV-news world of New York City really is consuming. She just...stops making time to see Marty.

This definitely rings true...happens all the time when someone has a high-powered position.

Thus we get that high-quality evergreen inciting event: Guilt and remorse over past behavior after someone dies. The senselessness of an older man of apparently diminishing capacities dying in a violent mugging is so utterly believable that I was pretty sure it would end up being a red herring.

Not at all. Author Belsky does a darn fine job of using it to motivate Clare to look into the wild and woolly world of Marty's carryings-on about the web of evildoing he's discovered. As she gets deeper and deeper into the material Marty's been trying to interest her in, she realizes...believably slowly and frustratingly incompletely...that he wasn't ranting about nothing but fantasies loosely based on coincidences. I admit I wanted to shout at her as she continued in her doubts. That, to me, means Author Belsky's doing a fine job of making me care about and invest in the story. For this reader, the fact that we're in first-person narration by Clare helps this investment.

The deeper Clare gets into this topsy-turvy world of power and corruption making devil's bargains, though, the more I came to think that I was missing something big about her character. When she uses a quid pro quo that, while I'm sure it's been tried before, would get a news director AND an FBI agent fired right quick by their respective employers, I realized that I wasn't buying in to Clare as a professional as fully as I would need to for this to be the next-level read it started out to be. Clare's deep personal issues aren't overly emphasized, but they're rather too neatly dovetailed into the dark, evil doings of some truly horrifying people.

The stakes ratchet up steadily as Marty's research unfolds in Clare's hands. Her skills as an investigative reporter are pretty well delineated. There are, I think inevitably given the problem I have outlined above, some credulity-straining convenient hurdle-collapsing events and coincidences. It's not the main thing I took away from the story, but I was aware that this was happening.

In the end, the *astoundingly* (but believably) heightened stakes of this investigation would have resulted in dire and condign consequences that don't happen here. I was glad to forget about that lapse, as I saw it, in authorial credibility because I really, really liked the way the story ended.

So on to the next one! ( )

TV station news manager Clare Carlson has been avoiding her mentor, Marty Barlow, who is on a hot story, when he is killed in a mugging. He had been investigating NYC landlords, including Marty's own son-in-law as well as an unknown serial killer, tracking back to a small midwestern town, where a popular teenager was killed. Belsky weaves a good story involving a NY mob boss, a district attorney aspiring to be major, her primary assistant, her political consultant (who has funded a library in the small town despite no obvious connection), and the local police there. Clare takes Barlow's information to the FBI agent, with whom she had a one-night stand and finagles her way into the investigation as the quid pro quo. Belsky's deep knowledge of the news breathes much realism into this mystery. Good series. ( )

Clare Carlson feels guilty when her old mentor Marty Barlow is murdered. He wanted them to get together but she was always too busy. She has a full-time job as the news director for television Channel 10. He was retired but still doing some investigations. He said he had the story of a lifetime; she still couldn't find the time.

After he dies, Clare begins to look into what Marty was investigating. First off, she finds he was looking at some buildings in New York City that have a number of problems. She finds that there is mob involvement and that the Manhattan Attorney General might be letting things go on. After all, Terri Hartwell is taking the political world by storm and is likely the next mayor of NYC.

But there's more. As she looks through Marty's computer files, she discovers a hidden file which seems to indicate that there is a secret serial killer who has been killing women for more than thirty years. It all began with a murder of a 17-year-old girl in a small town in Indiana.

Clare brings Marty's file to one of her ex-lovers named Scott Manning who now works for the FBI. She's still in love with him but he has gone back to his wife and is trying to rebuild their relationship. Clare is noteworthy for her difficulty with relationships. After all, she has been married and divorced three times and has any number of other short term relationships in her past.

Besides her current investigations into Marty's investigations, Clare is also dealing with a media consultant who wants to make Channel 10 a better news organization and also with the on-again-off-again romance of the two main evening news presenters.

To add even more drama, Clare is meeting with the daughter she gave away for adoption shortly after her birth when Clare was a college freshman. Linda Nesbit is now 27 with a husband and daughter of her own. As a child, she was kidnapped and Clare's coverage of that case earned her a Pulitzer. She followed the case again when the child, now known as Linda, was found again. She keeps meeting with Linda under the guise of doing a follow-up article. She hasn't confessed that she is actually Linda's birth mother.

The story is broken into sections which each deal with a part of this whole story. It is told from Clare's first person point-of-view. I enjoyed solving the mystery along with Clare and liked Clare as a character. I enjoyed seeing behind the scenes at news gathering organizations and seeing the changes that the internet and social media has made to the business.

I recommend this story and the first two in the series to fans of fast-paced stories. ( )

The Last Scoop by R. G. Belsky is a highly recommended mystery and the third in the Clare Carlson series.

Clare Carlson is the news director of a New York City Channel 10 News. When she learns about the death of her mentor and first newspaper editor Martin Barlow, she is remorseful that she wasn't able to meet with him when he contacted her, telling her that he was working on the biggest story of his career and wanted to share information concerning his investigation. Clare decides to look into the files on the stories he was researching. The first story has ties to the New York District Attorney Terri Hartwell's political aspirations and mob owned property. She also discovers he had evidence about a serial killer he’s dubbed "The Wanderer" who has been killing women for years. Clare takes some risks with her job and her life to break the stories.

The Last Scoop really contains two different stories. They have some ties with each other and are somewhat connected, but are really presented as two different stories rather than connecting stories that Clare is working on simultaneously. And the novel is presented as having multiple parts. I was intrigued at the beginning of the novel and basically enjoyed it to the end, but I did feel that the presentation could have been better. I wanted the story of The Wanderer, and although I can appreciate the first story, my interest in the whole novel would have been higher if everything was tied together more tightly.

Although this is the third book in the series, this is the first novel Clare Carlson novel I have read, so it can be read as a standalone. You would likely get more background details on Clare from the previous novels, but enough information is presented to understand her character. Some readers might be put-off by her disastrous personal life, but it is easy to focus on the information she is uncovering while looking into Barlow's research notes. Clare's inclination seems to be to make poor choices in her personal life.

The writing is good and captures the tone of current journalism in the news business well. Past cases are mentioned, but new readers will be able to follow the story. There was one ending of a story arch I loved. I enjoyed most of the novel except the final denouement of the whole novel which was disappointing to me and a letdown after the fast pace of the narrative up to the end. I did enjoy The Last Scoop and would read the next Clare Carlson novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Oceanview Publishing.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2020/06/the-last-scoop.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3391743058 ( )

In The Last Scoop, the third book in the Clare Carlson Mystery Series, author R.G. Belsky weaves a riveting mystery tale that easily draws the reader into New York Channel 10 News Director Clare Carlson's latest investigation.

The story begins with the random street murder of Clare's mentor and first newspaper editor, retired journalist Martin Barlow. Even though Martin was retired, he remained active in local NYC politics and community events. He even had a website dedicated to the suggestion that there is corruption between NYC politicians, the mob, greedy wealthy landlords, and the city government. Martin and Clare had kept in touch, and Martin tried to tell her about the two big stories that he had been working on: (1) the alleged corruption between the mob and NYC government, and (2) a thirty year old search for a serial killer possibly linked to the murders of twenty young women. Clare never checked out his tips and leads, she considered them ramblings of an old man, but now she feels guilty and is determined to follow through on Martin's last news scoops.

As Clare delves into the investigation of Martin's two big story scoops, she finds that there are more questions than answers, a growing list of suspects, deeply buried secrets, mobsters, a serial killer, and the intertwining of Clare's personal and professional lives and her dark past that continues to come to the surface.

The Last Scoop is a captivating mystery tale that is rich in detail and vivid descriptions. It has enough intriguing and suspenseful twists and turns that leaves the reader with no other option than to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. As a diehard fan of mystery tales, I must admit that this third installment in the series is my favorite. The complexity of the two story scoops and Clare's investigation kept me thoroughly riveted and so engrossed, I couldn't help but try and guess the outcome as Clare puts all the pieces of the puzzle together.

With a complex and realistic cast of characters, the author does a phenomenal job of transporting the reader into this fast-paced white-knuckle storyline. The thrilling cat-n-mouse game engages the reader to follow Clare's investigation as she tries to follow the notes and leads from the two stories that Martin had been working on prior to his death. The jaw-dropping surprise ending will leave the reader completely speechless. It just doesn't get any better than this!

The Last Scoop is one heck of an adrenaline rush that is a must-read for the true diehard mystery junkies!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of the book from the author/publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest book review and participation in a virtual book tour event hosted by Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours.

https://jerseygirlbookreviews.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-last-scoop-by-rg-belsky-v... ( )