Talk-Radio Mysteries Series

Murder Off Mike by Joyce Krieg introduces Shauna J. Bogart, a small and sassy radio talk show host/amateur sleuth. Shauna J. is used to dealing with the controversial, the contentious, the cranky, and the just plain crazed as the host of the afternoon gab fest on the top-rated station in California's state capital. But nothing prepares her for the day a fellow shock jock turns up with a bullet in his head. The cops say it's suicide, but Shauna J. isn't buying it. She launches her own investigation, putting herself at peril. Her investigation, aided and abetted by her loyal callers, leads her to a shattering secret that could derail the campaign of the leading candidate for governor. Meanwhile, behind-the-scenes shenanigans threaten the very existence of the radio station Shauna J. calls home. The action climaxes in a down-to-the-second pursuit through the streets of historic Old Sacramento during the city's world-famous Jazz Jubilee. Armed with only a roll of copper wire, a pirate radio transmitter, and her ingenuity, can Shauna J. get the station back on the air in time to reveal the truth to her listeners?

Caller One: "She was just the sweetest thing... there's no way she could have done all those horrible things you media people keep saying she did. Just no way." Caller Two:"Who's to say someone else didn't kill that Johnny Venture? Jasmine could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. How do we know for sure?" Caller Three: "If she really didn't do it, why break out of jail? Why not wait for the verdict and walk away a free woman?" These are some of the comments--not really unexpected--that Shauna J. Bogart is getting on her talk radio show after the news that a television and radio star known as Jasmine has escaped from custody. After a long career as an entertainer, Jasmine has been making an amazing comeback, but now she's just been jailed. Well, someone who wakes up and finds a dead body beside her in her hotel bed can't really complain about that. The news now is that as Jasmine and four other women prisoners are being transferred to a different jail, the police van is intercepted on the road and the women freed. Since the nationally famous Jasmine was a local girl, Shauna J's callers, all of whom claim to have known her, are quick (and thrilled) to comment. Shauna J. is thrilled, too. Anyone who works in the news business, she tells us, will admit to the same, if they're honest. Add to that the notice she's just received that tells her she's been voted into the Broadcast Legends Hall of Fame. With her lover Peter off on some annoyingly mysterious mission, Shauna decides to follow her dream - she will find Jasmine herself, and get a firsthand interview. Shauna's convinced she can get it; she's got something other news people don't have. The song, "Meet Me at the Casbah," is what has sparked Jasmine's second round of fame, and Shauna's own mother had coached Jasmine in that song, many years ago. That, the identity of the dead man, and a scam connected with the song itself all begins to come obligingly together. But the tighter the strands are tied, the more Shauna herself is in real jeopardy. As in her first, award-winning book, Joyce Krieg has the delightful Shauna take you behind the scenes of the broadcast world and beyond, spiced by the call-ins of Shauna J.'s listeners and decorated with bona fide pictures of what goes on "backstage" in local radio, in Slip Cue.

In her prize-winning first novel, Murder Off Mike, Joyce Krieg proved that going behind the scenes of talk radio can be fun, fascinating, and sometimes downright scary. She continues to prove it delightfully in Riding Gain, Shauna J. Bogart's third escapade. When Shauna J. Bogart's former intern is shot to death in the city park, the grandmother of the suspect, another young man, asks Shauna J. for help. The young man tried to run from the murder scene and was shot and seriously wounded by the police. The youth's grandmother is certain he is innocent and Shauna agrees to look into it. A murder-mystery might be just the thing to distract her from her own problems, which are currently numerous. Shauna J.'s boss has added a weekly spot for a self-styled psychic into her program, without even telling her. She's been getting puzzling call-ins from someone who claims to be her high school friend. And she's learned that a network station with an almost-promised job for her thinks her image is "too old." Another offer is in the wind, but does she want it enough to move from her beloved Sacramento to Los Angeles? More important, would Pete Kovacs, her significant other, be willing to make the move? Taking up the case, Shauna J. enlists her willing assistant, Josh, and the pair hunts down every puzzling clue. What they turn up is an evil scheme that touches more and more of the people they encounter and threatens Shauna J., as well as those around her, with sudden death.