The Last Scoop (3) (Clare Carlson Mystery)
The Last Scoop (3) (Clare Carlson Mystery) book cover

The Last Scoop (3) (Clare Carlson Mystery)

Hardcover – May 5, 2020

Price
$16.90
Format
Hardcover
Pages
368
Publisher
Oceanview Publishing
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1608093571
Dimensions
6.25 x 1.2 x 9.25 inches
Weight
1.48 pounds

Description

Praise for The Clare Carlson Mystery Series “ Below the Fold takes readers on a whiplash ride through a New York murder case. The television news investigation provides a fascinating lens for the story. Heroine Clare Carlson is formidable, human, and thoroughly authentic. R. G. Belsky knows his stuff.” —Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award-winning author “In today's world of fake news and alternate facts, R. G. Belsky reminds us why we need reporters like Clare Carlson more than ever before. She is what we want all our journalists to be—honest, objective, and relentless in her pursuit of the truth.” —Lee Goldberg, New York Times best-selling author “Belsky’s Yesterday’s News elicits all parents’ deepest fear—the disappearance of a child. But this intelligent, gripping novel is about so much more: ambition, secrets, and, most shocking of all, truth. Read it.” —Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times best-selling author “What a terrific book! A complex and compelling nonstop cat-and-mouse chase—and you're never quite sure which one's the mouse. Even the savviest of readers will be gasping in awe at Belsky's impressive story-telling skills.” —Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha, Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author “Belsky's behind-the-headlines thriller Yesterday’s News is about truth, lies—and how much of each we're willing to live with.” —Lori Rader-Day, Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author “ Below the Fold is a terrific mystery, written with a veteran journalist's eye. The pacing and plotting are everything you want, but it's R. G. Belsky's insider knowledge that adds a wonderful layer to this story of media and murder.”—Michael Koryta, New York Times best-selling author “ The Last Scoop is another surefire success for author R. G. Belsky as well as for Oceanview Publishing which has been putting out one top-notch page-turner after another.” — New York Journal of Books “Belsky’s experience as a journalist provides fascinating insights and a sense of authenticity. Readers will look forward to seeing more of doggedly determined Clare.” — Publishers Weekly R. G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. He has been a top editor at the New York Post, NY Daily News, Star Magazine, and NBC News. The Last Scoop is the third novel in his award-winning Clare Carlson Mystery Series, following Yesterday’s News and Below the Fold . Belsky resides in New York City.

Features & Highlights

  • The scariest kind of serial killer—one you don’t know exists
  • 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?
  • Clare Carlson is perfect for fans of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski
  • While all of the novels in the Clare Carlson Mystery Series stand on their own and can be read in any order, the publication sequence is:
  • Yesterday’s News
  • Below the Fold
  • The Last Scoop
  • Beyond the Headlines
  • It’s News to Me
  • Broadcast Blues
  • (coming 2024)

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(64)
★★★★
25%
(53)
★★★
15%
(32)
★★
7%
(15)
23%
(49)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

Believable characters and an engaging plot.

This was a new author for me. Love reading about independent women with serious jobs who just happen to end up solving crimes. Easy to believe this character took her job seriously- none of the fantasy that career-oriented women in books get sucked into- the clothes, the apartments, cars, and boyfriends that compete with the plot were missing. Liked it so much that I re-gifted it!
✓ Verified Purchase

Outstanding Page-Turning Thriller

R.G. Belsky has long had a gift for bringing the world of news journalism to to the page with both realism and sure handed expertise, powered by characters you come to deeply care about. This time around, the author, a real-life newsman himself, has crafted his best work so far; a thrilling story of suspense, shot-through with the adrenaline rush and excitement of chasing that Big Story--and finding it.

The Last Scoop is, at its core, a story about lies: The seemingly insignificant ones we utter so casually, the ones we tell to strangers and cops, teachers and priests; and the potentially toxic lies that we tell ourselves. Most of them amount to nothing, while some have the power to turn a ripple into a crushing tide that wreaks havoc and destruction on people and places we could never have foreseen. So goes Belsky's latest page-turner.

Told from the perspective of veteran reporter, Clare Carlson, the author's dry wit and wry observations season an otherwise driving and hardboiled narrative with pinches of dark humor just when you need them. As Clare says in the novel's opening lines, "I am a woman who deals with lies for a living," and she does so with singular determination, and an outlook that is not so much cynical as it is "unvarnished" in its clarity.

The story begins with Carlson investigating the seemingly random murder, a big-city disposable street crime, though this victim turns out to be a man named Marty Barlow, an old friend and mentor to Clare from her earliest days in the business. Against the wishes of her editor-in-chief, she pursues the thin strands of the story, which lead to darker places than she could ever have imagined. Belsky deftly weaves backstory and meticulously crafted twists into his narrative, never breaking stride as Clare pursues the facts, pulling at the threads of one mystery only to reveal the existence of an even larger one looming behind.

Clare Carlson is a likable, tough, impetuous, outspoken, witty and altogether engaging protagonist. I recommend you read this one, and I strongly suspect you'll quickly pick up the others in the author's canon when you're finished.

Highly recommended.
✓ Verified Purchase

These Clare Carlson books are great!

I love serial killer books and this is a good one, and a great escape! The main character has an entertaining quality that makes you care what's happening to her. She's at the top of her game in her job, but when it comes to her personal life.... well, not so much. It's set in a big city newsroom, and the goings-on of that whole world is entertaining in and of itself. Dick Belsky, the author, was himself a big city newsroom editor, and he knows how to make the details really feel authentic. And then.... there's the mystery itself, which really keeps you on the edge of your seat. So if you're looking for a good escape from the stress of life right now you can get lost in the trials and tribulation of people trying to stop a serial killer. Made me forget the stress of life for a little while, and that alone made me feel I got my money's worth!